Akatsuki, the Details
by Holsch
Summary: Why they joined Akatsuki. AU after Part I. ONESHOTS/TWOSHOTS. Can be read in any order. Comments appreciated.
1. I: Konan of Tojo

**Summary: **Why they joined Akatsuki. AU after Part I. Can be read in any order. Comments appreciated.

**A/N**: Listened to the reviewers and made this chapter linear.

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The paper tags don't explode, they shroud and deceive.

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...

**KONAN OF TOJO**

_Blank Sheet_

...

**10 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack**

...

A knife, an illusion and the small sacrifice of a stray dog. Konan found it easier now. Two missing-nin from wherever had tried to sneak into her little eastern Wood Country village. Reasons: money? There was none to take. A mission? They were criminals, and would have robbed any small-time thug dumb enough to approach them with an offer. Shelter?

The eight-year-old girl stumbled back on shaky legs and settled on a log by the roadside. She looked down the dirt path – it pierced a forest hardly seen in the night. But in her mind's eye, Konan saw the village. She saw the collapsed shops, the tents in the square and the barren farm where she was often sent to clean up prowling delinquents and loitering drunks. She saw no windows to pry open, all of them boarded up, she saw no cattle to lead away, all of them eaten, and she saw no homes even the common vagrant would enter, all the homes full.

The reasons were few, and clear. She saw only men to kill, women to take and children to steal.

The outlaws laid in the middle of the road, side by side, face down in the gravel, the dog buried at their feet, without so much as a bump to show for it. It had been scared by the commotion of her ambush and, disoriented, ran through the forest and straight towards them. When one of the missing-nin had come at Konan from behind with a kunai, she had put the dog to use with a replacement technique.

Konan's partner had returned by the time the battle was over. Now he was gone to alert the guard, in case there were more invaders, and to bring some other child to carry the still useful bodies. Konan bore contempt for her blithe peers, but none so much as their adult commanders: they sauntered in the wake of her efforts, took the spoils and went home freely. She fought, received nothing and returned to the orphanage.

She became aware of how long she had waited now, and once that occurred to her, she heard footsteps. First she stared into the darkness down the east way, expecting her partner's wavy, blonde hair to come bobbing as he ran. But when she felt someone sit on the log on her other side, she knew it was not a guard or any help who had appeared. There was an assurance in their presence, a slow, oppressive confidence - even the sight of her defeated enemies sprawled out in the road, a proof of her strength, failed to dissolve her fear.

"Is this your work?" The arrival – he – spoke softly, calmly, almost gently. By the sound of it, it was not a threatening question, not even inquisitive, simply a request for confirmation of a commonly understood fact. If she were in control of herself, Konan would have taken this as a cue that quick, excessive reactions weren't necessary, but as it was, she sat frozen. She didn't even raise her eyes to him: she only saw his clean and neat hand on the log beside her.

He continued. "It's impressive. And you did it alone, didn't you?" He was their leader, Konan thought. They weren't immediate subordinates – a man of his presence couldn't be closely associated with low-ranking scum like them. Perhaps they had never met their superior. Nevertheless, it was a loss to him, a transgression significant enough to warrant retribution.

And yet, in spite of these thoughts, Konan couldn't help but sense some pride, in his voice or in herself, and without thinking further on it, she answered. "Yes."

"And no one helped?" A persistent tinge of bitterness drove her gaze from his hand to the bodies - and as the thought came to her, he spoke the words. "They never help, do they?"

Something beckoned the tinge, struck at the crack. "I hate them," she muttered for the first time to another person. He stood and walked away. By the time she looked, he had nearly disappeared into the pressing black: a few strands of long, pale blue hair flitted after him. She caught his parting words.

"Maybe you should leave."

...

The coins clinked down the satchel. The sound lingered in the spacious hall of their rundown, wooden house. Konan wondered what the money would be spent on, casting a skeptical glance at the mismatched patchwork decorations on the spotty walls and discoloured furniture. A gaggle of ferrety children watched from a doorframe to the living room and quietly scurried away under her gaze, though she never thought much of them. They were only a few years apart, yet they stood in different worlds.

With a bow and a thank you, the teenage maid closed the satchel with a knot and rushed away, up the stairs, leaving Konan alone with her blonde partner, Hayashi. Both had a bandage or two on their faces. She picked at hers idly while he said something, and then she interrupted him. "That's everything from today's mission. First thing once we're home, huh?"

Hayashi shrugged, and a loop of his leather armour fell off his shoulder. "Wasn't so bad, was it? Better than usual."

Konan didn't answer, only glaring up the staircase. She could still hear clinking.

...

Night fell over the large, rickety house. In the courtyard, lightly armoured men returned to base. In the kitchen, children and maids of all ages ate bread and rice at a long table stretching from the tiny kitchen into the similarly sized dining hall, quiet about the lack of elbow room. Upstairs, in several glorified broom closets, leather-uniformed children ate alone on the floor. In one such room, two children sat in the moonlight from a small window. "I'm leaving soon."

Hayashi's chicken leg missed and poked his cheek. "What?"

Konan refused to look at him, scratching at the plate with her fork in a futile attempt to eat the last few corns of rice. "I'll be gone before the week's over, I bet." In the corner of her eye, she saw his hands drop to his knees, staining his pants with grease.

"Where will you go?"

Her eyes rose in a glare unfit for a child. "I don't know. I'll find a way."

"But...why?"

She wanted to slap him."Because." What did he know? Their orphanage produced servants, shinobi, or worse, and boys always become either servants or shinobi. "I hate it here –" She cut herself off - the door clicken open and light spread.

A leather-uniformed shinobi loomed in the hallway. "Konan. Come with me."

...

Konan stopped struggling against his grip halfway down the stairs when she saw the group at its foot, in the orphanage's entrance hall: several adult shinobi as well as their leader and her caretaker, the moustachioed Shuzen, who faced a luxuriously robed man flanked by soldiers. Her eyes drifted towards the shimmering veil hiding the robed man's face, and a chill ran through her as he shook hands with Shuzen.

She gripped the banister defiantly, but the tall shinobi had already gone to join his colleagues. In the living room, she spotted children hiding, watching. They didn't see her. Like Hayashi, who had timidly followed from the upstairs room and crept up beside her, they watched Shuzen, all enrapt by the process of Konan's fate being sold. "Yes, she's a very talented girl, very useful in these times... Ah! There she is!"

Konan looked down to see Shuzen had a hand raised to beckon her, grinning sycophantically with respect to the veiled man. "Konan, are you ready to go? Say hello to-" Shuzen paused, thrown off by her particular gloom - a wave of impatient shifting visibly shot through the soldiers and shinobi in the hall. "Well... This is the eastern daimyo's second heir, master Tojo Kanzu. He has hired you for your services."

Hayashi piped up "Shuzen, sir, Konan has been h-here her whole-"

"Quiet! Bring her here!" Konan didn't realize the boy had obeyed until she felt a weak tug at her wrist. She turned away from Shuzen, and saw the boy's watery, blue eyes ashamed to meet hers.

Konan gripped the banister. "Hey –"

The tug was no longer weak: she tumbled down the stairs. She hit the floor and stayed, trembling, until one of the adult shinobi - or Hayashi, Konan thought, eyes cast down - pulled her to her feet and shoved her towards Shuzen. "Good," he said, and then a hand was on her shoulder and leading her away.

But the hand didn't belong to him, Konan realized as another voice spoke, a voice familiar in its calm. "Don't worry." Lured away from Shuzen, the older shinobi, and the boy, her eyes fluttered upwards, hopeful. She looked into Tojo Kanzu's face as he parted his veil. "Everything happens for a reason."

...

**2 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack**

...

The satchel's contents clinked loudly as she set it down on the bedroom bureau. Konan took a purple robe from one banister of her four-post bed and wore it over the green tunic and leather of her uniform. It belonged to the younger sister of the heir, to be worn when she came to visit, but Konan had begun to grow into it at sixteen.

She stepped back towards the bureau's vanity mirror and admired herself in the gold-trim garment. She plucked a coin out of the satchel and compared it to the colour of the fringe, then replaced it, pleased.

"So frugal." Konan turned to see Kanzu, veiled as always, standing in the doorway to her room. He stepped over to her bed and sat lightly on the velvet cushions. "You know, it would be wise to spend some of that money."

She returned his smile, which she could not see but knew was there, and turned to her great wardrobe closet, taking off and hanging up the robe. "On what, clothes?" She sifted through her excessive array of outfits. "A girl can only wear so many colors."

"True… Perhaps investments, then?"

Konan found the suggestion laughable. "In what, real estate?" She gestured around at the polished wood walls. "When you inherit the daimyo's castle, I'll just take this place, right?" Kanzu sighed at her response, and Konan realized he was being serious.

"Why wait for the leftovers of men sated by their yields? Wealth is not a tide that comes to those who stand on the shore." He chuckled at Konan's bemusement: unlike Tojo Kanzu, she didn't have the typical Wood taste for proverbs. "Try to understand this..."

He lifted his veil. Tojo Kanzu – Human Path – revealed long, pale blue hair, black piercings through his earlobes, and strange, rippling eyes. He smiled at Konan, a smile to give her his confidence, to relieve his words of reprimand. "You must sow seeds everywhere. Then, opportunities will present themselves."

...

The room behind Hayashi filled with suffocating silence. His breath came short and ragged, oxygen-tinged moans squeezed out by terror in staccato bursts. He faced the corner, half-hunched to vomit, squinting so the blood across the walls seemed like vague smudges. But whenever a tear stung in his eyes and he had to blink, he saw the wild streaks, splatter and drips, and he choked.

Help came much later, and though they quickly realized who the culprit was, they could not, in their shock, comprehend how she had done it. On the floor behind him laid several shinobi, among them his long-time caretaker and supervisor, Shuzen, all similarly torn apart. When they finally arrived, Hayashi turned away from the corner, forgetting the sting of tears, believing for a full second that she had returned to take him before his wide eyes sifted through the carnage and found fellow, terrified shinobi.

Far away, a great mansion stood silent on a hill beyond once protected gates. The last place where there had been life in Tojo Kanzu's home was the dining hall, fully seated on the occasion – now staff littered the floor and royals were slumped in their chairs.

And at the end of the table sat the host himself, Kanzu: between the bloodstains one caught patches of light blue in his hair, and past his torn veil was the hint of a smile.

...

**1 Year After the Kyuubi Attack**

...

"I'm so silly." She dabbed the few tears with frayed ends of the black cloak draped over her naked shoulders. "Such a silly, silly girl." She stayed turned to the illusory oak woods projected by her paper dome, still risen, still depicting the road where they first met, both so different then. "Just a silly, silly little girl," his laugh set hers off, and she finally dared to look at him, behind, sat on a replica of the log where he'd sat as someone else, an impostor on solid wood, now himself on a falsification. "Silly, silly -"

"Silly," Nagato finished. This is how she joked and lived: she took the truth and repeated it, stressed it, magnified it to the obscene until it burst into meaninglessness. When they first met, her eight years old, him ten years older, she hadn't learned this release: she accepted the fact of her circumstances and seethed, trapped. Her world then was staked out by three points - power, food, desire, all ruled by coin - and existence within these bounds meant subordination. Eleven years later, he wanted her to have liberated herself.

He looked down as she closed her cloak, stepped around him on crunching leaves, and continued to pull his black hair back into a neat knot. "I hope you're not disappointed."

"I don't understand why, then, you wanted to meet me." Before her advances, her body had been close to his back as she smoothed his head - now he felt the cool air between them. "In this body."

"_My_ body," he reminded her, "this is me, as I am. And you can't think of any other reason?"

"I can think of a few, none as appealing."

"And this was? To you?" She ignored him, wound up his hair in a bun and swept his fringes back behind his ears, brushing his stubbled cheeks. "Answer me."

"Zetsu spies, countries away. Sasori builds, countries away. Kakuzu collects, countries away. I'm the only one you bring to your side, the only one to have met you _as you are_, the only woman, certainly – why? Why else?"

Nagato took her lingering hands and held them to his face. He closed his eyes and sent a small wave of chakra, not to disrupt her illusion, but to suggest she undoes it. She did: the woods paled and wilted, became paper tags, fell away and retreated to inside her cloak, to clothe her. They were in a dark room lined with pipes and ruststained plates: before them was a balcony to the Village Hidden in the Rain, the newly acquired seat of their organization. He was confident she had an answer, and he would await it patiently.

...

**16 Years After the Kyuubi Attack**

...

They met again many years later.

Hayashi was an angry man now: angry at the Cloud, who first laid waste to the Wood in the second great war; at the infestation of outlaws and bandits, missing-nin and foreign saboteurs; and at his own daimyos and generals, whose leniency had exacerbated his country's degeneration.

Konan appeared commanding outlaws, bandits, missing-nin and foreign saboteurs, more men than survived in his own Prajna Group, and he convinced himself he worked with her for pragmatism only.

And yet, for all her power, her allure was not in the force of dangerous opportunity she had become, but glimpses of its embodiment. He loathed himself for his weakness, but her interest in the country she had abandoned served him. Together they could drive out the Wood's enemies and rebuild it, if by means he'd rather close his eyes to.

He was in her arms the night of her first victory. She made the case it was theirs, but she seemed to have little concern for the shinobi she'd lost in their endeavours, and little could take his mind off the men he'd lost. Little besides her face, just by his.

One concern remained. "At the orphanage," Hayashi asked, "why did you spare me?"

Konan smiled. Swaths of paper surged outside and obscured their woodland base behind some illusion, protecting them from any stray pursuers. She recalled the night she was sold and the last she saw of Hayashi: crying, oblivious to her peaceful departure. Even then, she had an inkling of the lesson Kanzu would teach her: even then, eight years old, she thought she might embrace the boy, kiss away the chicken grease on his cheek and tell him not to worry. Even then, she saw the world in black and white, in gold, in coin saved and coin spent.

Save and spend. Her arms found their way around him. "Don't worry," Konan said, nudging him to lean closer, "everything happens for a reason."

...

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2011


	2. II: Ando Zetsu

He's just a boy, with one boy's mind, and no one is stuck inside a flytrap.

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**ANDO ZETSU  
**_Soils Unspoiled_

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**9 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

The house creaked. Pelted rocks and torches cracked the patio floor and smashed the windows. Flowers and vines in the foundation crept and forced their way into the walls. The house creaked. An agonized wail emanated from inside.

Zetsu shut the drapes. He cut himself on a shattered window pane slashed through a curtain, on shards scattered on the floor, and on a flying chunk of glass that nicked his pale face when he misjudged which living room window a stone was aimed at.

Most windows forced open, his effort merely dimmed the sight of the mob outside. But he felt less disoriented given room to consider that sight, which greeted him after he woke late at night: screaming men standing on the road by his lawn, holding up blades, fire and three bodies.

His knees weakened. He fell and crawled into the entrance hall. He had finally remembered who the three were. He had met them once, three years ago, when he was just six. His father had brought him to his workplace, a small agricultural station where they cultivated plants for both commerce and use by Grass shinobi.

It came to Zetsu, why his father hadn't been home yet last night when he arrived past midnight after a patrol shift. Yes, now he understood why the growing crowd still hadn't advanced past the garden.

Another wail came from upstairs. Zetsu had known what was happening when that same wailing had startled him out of bed. But after this, the twelfth cry since, he realized that this time, his father was helpless to stop himself.

He climbed the stairs, stopping only to look back when something crashed loudly into his door, expecting frenzied villagers to pour in, pushing through a sea of flames lit outside – but the thud that followed told him that whatever they threw had fallen uselessly. He continued - buds and tiny wires of green bloomed around him, ceiling to floor.

On the second floor, to the left, past the guest room - all manners of plantlife adorned the walls. He stepped onto thick, soft grass, brushed aside bushes and long leaves, and reached for the door handle to his father's room. It resisted. He pushed.

The door snapped long vines laid thickly across the frame. The ground was a verdant slush – not liquid, simply malleable – and after a couple of steps, devoured the shards on his soles, leaving only spots of blood.

Everything but the bed had been similarly swallowed. That was the first thing Zetsu noticed, even before the huddled mass on the floor, from which everything green in the room was issued, even the hair on Zetsu's head - his father writhed on his side, back to Zetsu. Brittle earth poured from his linen shirt and black pants, turned to slush against the floor, petals bursting from and drooping dead on his limbs. He blared his monotone cry.

The second thing Zetsu noticed was that the photographs of his mother had been swallowed up, as well.

"Zetsu?" His head snapped down at the sound of his father's voice, always raspy but now worse than ever. Zetsu had to rip his feet out of the pulsating ground to reach his father's side. "Zetsu?" His father convulsed and kept his twitching head down, so Zetsu couldn't see his face.

"Yes," Zetsu answered and grasped his father's arm. "You have to get away from this…"

"I can't." His father shrugged him off and pulled himself up by the bedsheets. Zetsu caught a glimpse of his father's right cheek: black. Nothing else. "I can't stop it this time. I –" He stopped abruptly, turned his head right, and vomited a green mush on the duvet.

The mush blended seamlessly into the ground. Zetsu paid it no attention. Half of his father's face and neck was entirely black. Half - he was absolutely, perfectly halved. At the sight of a black right hand clutching the bed sheets, a black right ankle underneath the pants leg and black toes sticking out the right sandal, Zetsu felt like vomiting as well.

"Hey… hey, Zetsu..." His father smiled, chuckled even, small wheezes roughly expelled. His right hand fell limply off the bed and onto the ground, where it sank, faster than Zetsu had, as he faced his son. 'Try… try not to worry too much… I don't want you having nightmares…"

Zetsu grabbed his father's collar, pulling his drooping upper body from the starving floors, to no avail. Frustrated, a pain building in his throat, he hooked his arms under his father's armpits and stood, anchoring himself and lifting. His father's arms tore out of the ground, and they stood for moment in a weak, odd hug, Zetsu's face buried in the back of his father's head. His father stirred slightly, cheek pushed against Zetsu's chest, tilting his head back until he could see his son.

He tried to form words, but only a panting mumble came out before his voice failed and his eyes closed, and he tore out of Zetsu's grip. Soon Zetsu stood alone in the four-wall-forest, his arms still raised. His father's breath had been fresh and aromatic.

Light struck his face. He believed it was sunlight and felt relieved for a moment, then certain morning had come to interrupt his dream, but just before a shadow blocked it, he realized it was firelight.

A tall man kneeled in the frame of a fresh opening cut in the wall, severed vines and boards on the floor in front of him. "Zetsu!" Zetsu stumbled back in shock, then recognized the man as his jounin captain, Ochi. "Where's Hoshin? Where's your father?" Zetsu was frightened by his mentor's frantic tone, but more so by the sudden realization that his father had indeed disappeared. He searched the floor for the green mush.

Screams surged from outside, and another ninja called out, "it's spreading!"

"Get them out of here!" Ochi roared back. "They're not helping anybody, get them away!" Over the sound of shouted commands and defiant roars, Ochi turned to Zetsu again and pleaded with him. "We need to stop your father, Zetsu… He's let himself lose control again."

"It's not his fault!"

A mere look, and Ochi made clear his lack of sympathy. "The villagers think there's been some sort of ongoing experiment at his station, and his coworkers went along with it for some power. And they think us shinobi dealt with them." Ochi, calmly knelt, lashed out with a kunai at a vine at his arm. "But we know there's no experiment, we know your father's the only one, and we know he let loose and killed his own crewmates."

"And, and I'm his son, so, what, you're going to kill me?"

He hadn't meant it seriously, but Ochi paused too long, and looked away when delivering his answer. Zetsu watched him lean outside and shout: "It's hopeless! Burn it to the –"

How a jounin gets blindsided by a genin, he couldn't say, but Ochi should have seen him coming – perhaps he hadn't yet stopped seeing him as more than a brewing disaster. Even as they tumbled through the air, his arms still wrapped around Ochi's waist, Zetsu didn't feel his captain was an enemy.

But once they crashed into the lawn, and its thick spires of flora grabbed Ochi and slung him off Zetsu, and Zetsu saw the crowd of villagers approach with reinvigorated fury, he knew he was no longer welcome in the Grass.

He performed the handseals for one of the few techniques he had mastered, and petals from his father's sunflowers, still standing on the lawn, scattered, tensed, and then flew at the mob, cutting at its frontlines. And while more of his father's spires twisted around him, protecting him from the onslaught of attacks from surrounding shinobi, he performed the handseals for the Shunshin.

...

When the sun rose, Zetsu was in the forest. If he was within the borders of his former home, he didn't know, but it didn't matter. The forest was his home now. He decided this after he fled his pursuers and realized that the deeper into the wild he went, the stronger he felt the presence of his father. Or rather, he soon corrected himself, the presence of his family.

A kunai kept in the escape proved useful for hunting, but soon his hands were sufficient, because his family rose from the earth to help.

However, he still needed the kunai when capturing fish, so he removed the lowest of the three strings on his beige overcoat, poked a hole in a rock with a chakra-channelling sunflower-petal provided by his family, and tied the rock to his kunai. That way, it wouldn't drift away in the river after he struck his target.

He hunted and hunted, and then, one day, Zetsu came to the river to fish, looked into the water, and saw in his reflection that his pale skin had grown paler, his amber eyes had grown yellow, and stretching up along one side of his neck was blackness.

Zetsu was startled and disturbed when the blackness wouldn't stop, not until it marked a border across his body. From then on, Zetsu stopped hunting, stopped eating, and stopped seeing his family, and eventually, the blackness faded. After that, he only hunted with his kunai.

He began to move what seemed like northeast, knowing it was relatively easy to reach the Jungle Country from the Garden Country, and perhaps once there the Waterfall would take him. In any case, if he was still in his old home, he needed to leave, before the Grass found him.

He didn't know if he ever reached the Jungle, or left the Garden. Wherever he went, there was only forest, and he always felt the presence of his family, his father, his mother, pressing down on him, countered only by his own fear, and his wish to, at least, fulfil his father's last request. The struggle consumed him, blinded him.

For some time, though it never occured to him, Zetsu was alone.

...

The sun rose, but Zetsu felt only a gleam of it deep inside the hole he had carved out under a steep little hill. But it was enough light to softly wake him up, and he sat still for a moment and watched the grass hanging over the edges of his cave turn from green to warm gold in the sun.

"He's here, righ'?"

Zetsu knocked his head sitting up, and he had grown lax enough to let out a small croak of pain. "Yep," the bright voice from outside added, "he's right underneath me!"

Terrified, Zetsu sidled up against the back wall, kicked desperately to push himself back further, then tucked his legs in to keep them out of sight, all while his arms were spread wide, hands grasping the earth walls as if to pull them close together.

And he could, and would have, had feet not appeared just then in front of the hole, and the grass turned back to green in the shade. It was too late.

But whoever stood there did not kneel, grab his ankles and pull him out. They waited for a moment, then stepped away, and there was light again. Then, after a few moments, they spoke: "wanna come out?"

It was not the polite tone of the words that caught Zetsu off-guard, but the voice that spoke them: a strange, deliberate drawl, as if its owner's tongue was too large for his mouth. Either way, he felt less threatened now, despite his suspicion. "There's only two of us out here," the voice said in response to his wary silence, "an' we don't mean no harm."

"Yeah, trust us," the higher voice called, but it was silenced by a stern hush from the drawling man.

Zetsu waited for a moment. Part of him wanted to disappear into the earth behind him and flee to certain safety - but another part of him, now a greater part, greater than he had realized before, had been worn down by his lonely life and was tired enough to risk its life in return for some human contact.

And so, Zetsu crawled out of the hole, and stood up to face the two: a blue-haired girl, about the same age as him¸ and a bulky, wide-set man with brown hair and a frog-like face, both wearing identical, all-black cloaks. The girl seemed brightly curious when she first saw him, but as he looked at her, she darkened and stepped back a bit behind the man. But the man approached, smiling, and reached out – Zetsu almost jumped back, but the man didn't stop, making it clear he was only offering a handshake.

Zetsu didn't take it, but he didn't run. "Wh-who, what are you?" He had meant to ask what they want, but he had grown unaccustomed to speaking.

But the man understood. "I'm Kichiro, an' tha's Konan. We're ninja. An' I wanted to talk to you."

"Ninja? What village?"

"Konan's from the Wood Country. An' me…" Kichiro reached inside his cloak and took out a protector, and upon seeing it, Zetsu did jump back. Kichiro chuckled and tapped the protector. "Easy. Look." Zetsu, kunai raised, did so, and slowly realized a long scratch had been made across the symbol of the Grass.

"You're like me?"

Kichiro smiled as if Zetsu had arrived at the conclusion he had hoped for. "In more ways than you know. Tha's why I wanna talk to you." He put his protector away. "I know about your ability."

Never having heard it called an ability, it took Zetsu a moment to realize Kichiro was referring to his bloodline. His kunai, which he had slowly been lowering, was raised again. "And you want it?"

"Yes. Not for myself, though."

"For who, then?"

"For us, to share." Zetsu considered the lilting words for a moment, then shook his kunai, demanding an explanation. "I've heard your family history. Lots of accidents, on your father's side. One included your mother. Many, the villagers. The Grass tolerated it, when they thought they could control it. An' then… they couldn't."

"No one can."

Kichiro smiled again, for the same reason as last. "I can."

And suddenly he was forming handseals. Zetsu did the same, his apprehension quickly turned to rage at the betrayal: and as Kichiro raised his hands up, petals broke off dozens of nearby flowers and flew at his open arms.

The petals stopped, and floated softly to the ground. Specks of light, of chakra, hung in the air where the petals had been. They floated about and gathered into ever larger orbs of energy, until three the size of Kichiro's head floated above his. He looked up at the orbs, smiling wider.

He opened his mouth and swallowed them.

Zetsu looked to Konan for some idea of what was happening, but she simply glared. Kichiro took in a few great breaths, and Zetsu saw the reason for his strange speech: a thick, black stub pierced the centre of his tongue.

Kichiro paused, then moved forwards carefully, again reaching out with one hand. This time, it was not to shake Zetsu's. Kichiro stepped forwards until he was just before the boy, then kneeled and picked up the dropped kunai. He took Zetsu's hand, and Zetsu let him, and placed the kunai in its palm. "Well? What do you think?"

Zetsu stared at him. He heard a whistle in the trees. It faded away, replaced by the loud grumble of his stomach.

Kichiro – Preta Path – smiled again, and his thick cheeks pinched his strange, rippling eyes. "Well said."

...

**2 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

The eighth house burned down the same as the others, along with the throngs of flora that covered them. The eighth family perished, though the jounin Ochi was able to rescue one child, despite a limp worsened by every trial.

In the shambles of the first house, they found a note in the basement, protected by a dense bundle of vines the fire didn't entirely destroy. It simply read, 'I'm sorry', and it was placed next to a plant on which Zetsu had left his surveillance spores.

It was a childish whim, but he wanted to see their confused faces when they for one, mad second thought the culprit was a sunflower.

…


	3. III: Sasori of the Red Sands

Some stayed the same, in the end - it's just the specifics, the inner workings, that changed.

* * *

...

**SASORI OF THE RED SANDS  
**_The Red Thread_

...

**6 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

Flick, flick, flick – arms thrown high, fingers pointed, the fuzzy-haired Benihashi spun down to a knee and finished his dance.

While he floated upright, Akaari leapt out stage left, twirled through the air serenely, and landed gently beside her opposite. She drew close to him, enticed him to incline, but she tip-toed past his round face, to his other side. There, she raised her lips to his ear. Without an actor or singer voice's, her whisper was only a wooden clacking.

Benihani's mouth clattered in response and rung loudly in the quiet theatre. A belated wheeze of a laughter came from one of the two audience members. Benihashi broke away from Akaari and recommenced dancing, and the laugh became a cackle, punctuated by a grunt – a bottle struck Benihashi's head with a jingling thump.

The dancer and the seductress froze in the midst of their movements, threateningly to a more attentive drunk - this one staggered into the aisle and towards the exit with non-seeing eyes boring into his back.

Once the door slammed shut beyond the stage lights, the puppets continued their dance and muted dialogue until they fell into each other's arms and sunk to the floor lifelessly.

Though unaided by men to pull the ropes, the curtains closed and then opened seconds later. Benihashi and Akaari stood on the stage, and between them was a much shorter figure, dressed in all black and hidden behind a kabuki mask. The three bowed, and the last audience member applauded them in the darkness.

...

1AM.

The puppeteer's routined hands abandoned the remaining members of the squad: they clambered wildly against the tunnel walls for an exit, a gap in the stony black to hurtle down, away from any possible pursuer. They were understandably on edge, their ambush having failed and their puppeteer force overwhelmed by the trespassers. They had given up on fighting themselves and instead barrelled towards their only chance of escape.

It was a small hope. If anyone had attempted to flee and get backup, they had likely been killed, but in spite of that, there was one ally headed towards their group: a member of their squad who had been late for the initial deployment. The cave had a single winding tunnel, connecting two entrances – they had been chased into one, and so their only choice was to go out the other. Perhaps their pursuers had turned around mid-chase and gone to meet them there, but it was nevertheless a more attractive choice – it was the landing site of their squad.

They exited onto the open, forested area, where they had first gone into the cave to flush out trespassers who waited, forewarned, on the other end. Since their silent arrival under the moonlight, that open, forested area had become a battlefield.

Both their worst fear and their one hope had become reality. The enemies had in fact back-pedalled against their knowledge and cut through the forest to catch them in retreat. They had in fact beaten the two of them there.

But so had the last member of their squad. Although he couldn't have fought by himself, Sasori stood alone among the corpses.

...

With a twitch of his finger, Sasori shut the stage curtains again. With another, the lights outside came on. Whoever still sat in the bleachers clapped on. Sasori unrolled a scroll and formed a one-handed seal: his puppets disappeared in brief puffs of smoke. He replaced the scroll in his pocket and headed for stage exit left. He still had plenty of time before the next mission. He had finished the last one quickly enough.

The applause slowed, but didn't end. On the last step off the stage, Sasori stopped and turned back.

...

5AM.

Chuunin left their reports, councilmen had them read back, elders offered their advice. All of them came and went, while Sasori stayed. The Kazekage didn't leave his seat behind his desk, and rarely moved, except to turn halfway and glance out the curving glass wall behind him. While his many visitors informed him of the night's mission, the sun rose over the Sand.

Finally, only the Third and Sasori remained in the office. The Kazekage turned his attention from the sunrise to the red-haired teenager in front of him and watched him sharply, mouth hidden behind the hand he was leaning on and most of his face obscured by his wild, black mane. Strangely, the same thought occurred to both of them: how young the other appeared.

"Five dead, Sasori."

"I saved two, and one was only hurt." Sasori's tone and dull eyes made it clear this record had no value to him: it was not a defence so much as a way of telling the Third to stop bothering him.

The Kazekage slid a medical file across the table, the last that'd been brought into the office. "Hisago died on the operating table. Weren't you paying attention?"

"I can replace them."

The Third's hand pressed the file: Sasori watched the joints whiten. "Puppets are not humans, Sasori."

"That's right." He smiled vaguely. "They're better than humans." He had never said it out loud, and he hadn't imagined saying it first to the Kazekage, but he felt completely at ease.

The Third visibly bristled in a futile attempt to stare Sasori down. "You're young, Sasori, and talented, and that's why we forgive your mistakes. But you're also a ninja, and I can only be so lenient."

"I agree. I'm very talented."

"But you're not the only one who is."

"You are, as well, aren't you?"

"I am."

"Then why don't you go?" He could control his face, he could control his posture, but this time, Sasori failed to control his voice, flushed with emotion. And to his surprise, the Kazekage let some infect his own expression. Appalled, Sasori understood he was being pitied.

The Third caught himself in this act, too, and didn't protest Sasori's departure.

...

A wave of his hand dimmed the lights. Sasori stepped around the curtain onto the stage and searched the bleachers for the spectator.

There he was, two rows back in an aisle seat. He wore a dark, conical hat with an open veil attached, and sat close enough that the brim hid his face. Though a burgundy cloak covered it, his build seemed fairly large.

"I've finally caught on?" Sasori said, through a seal in his mask to darken and distort his voice.

"Well," the spectator answered in a reedy chuckle, "I'm certainly a fan, but I wouldn't put all my eggs in this basket." Sasori smirked. Money didn't matter: the theatre was long abandoned, and the lowly entrepreneurs with fingers in the district's seedier establishments were easily scared off from buying the property. Quality was unimportant, too: the performances were too brief to care about. "May I see the puppets?"

Sasori obliged with a summon. "He is Benihashi," he pointed to the red-haired, kindly-looking male puppet, "and she is Akaari," he moved two fingers, and the long-haired brunette on his other side curtsied.

"Very good. Yes, you're very good. I don't think I've ever seen such skilful puppeteering in a play."

He caught on. "Where else, then?" The spectator simply nodded, and Sasori understood what kind of person he was, to conceal himself in that manner. "This is simply a hobby of mine… I wouldn't have time for better productions."

"Shame. You'd be famous. You'd go down in history as one of the best." Sasori frowned behind his mask. Who was this man? He was about to introduce himself with a false name, hoping to find out, but the spectator cut in first. "Are they original?"

"What?"

"Benihashi and Akaari. Are they based on a model, or your design?"

Sasori didn't wait for a clarification of whether 'a model' was a puppet or a person. "They are mine. My design. I make all of my own puppets."

"I see. Yes, they're very –"

"Lifelike." The spectator nodded.

...

10AM.

All morning and all day, Sasori built puppets in his airy, well-lit apartment. He had knocked down the wall separating the living room, his bedroom, and the other bedroom, and turned the wide space into his workshop. In his own bedroom he had built his lab, where he analyzed and prepared new poisons, and he quite enjoyed the contrast: in one room he created death, in the other life.

He preferred the former, but was more often occupied with the latter. Wooden and plastic limbs hung from hooks on the walls, bolts and screws lay discarded on the floor, and all manners of finished mechanisms – flamethrowers, shuriken launchers, collapsible arm blades, metallic poison stingers – sat in boxes and canisters in each corner. And in a chest in the other bedroom, all his finished puppets laid waiting, sealed away in scrolls.

Throughout the day, people would come, always puppeteers or shinobi, to pick up pieces commissioned by the village. That was his chief value, he realized the previous year, at fourteen: the gift that could be spread and controlled by others, that diluted him. To combat this, however belligerently, he would install mechanisms in his puppets beyond the parameters of the requests, so that their full potential would require his mind, and in case they were ever turned against him. Or, Sasori sometimes thought, in case he wished to turn them against their owners.

But that day, he made something for himself, for no other owner. When shinobi would stop by, he would drop whatever was at his desk, go into the other bedroom, and come back with the requested scroll, leaving the visitor a full minute to eye his latest work. But that morning, he had touched a kunai – a conduit – to the appropriate scrolls in the chest, and the door to the other bedroom as well as the exit, so that when someone came knocking, the entire business was handled remotely with chakra strings.

And while his visitors watched the brief puppeteering show, common shinobi in awe of his magic and fellow puppeteers in awe of his expertise, Sasori stood at his desk and obscured his latest project as well as he could with his socially imposing but physically unimpressive frame. This work was not like the parlour trick of floating objects and living doors. This work was for no one else to see.

At the end of the afternoon, Sasori went to his supply closet and retrieved three items: a sewing kit, and two wigs, red and brown.

...

"Have you had them long?"

Sasori smoothed over the past exchange and waved at the two puppets: they took off and began to fly around above the bleachers. "I finished them today, actually."

"World premiere, huh? I wish I had a camera." Sasori granted the spectator an amused scoff. "Have you been doing this long?"

"This, here? No. Only a year. But this…" His hand barely moved, and the puppets swerved down through the air towards the spectator, coming to a soft halt a few inches before crashing and hanging over his head. The spectator hardly looked. "All my life. I started young."

"The best always do. Who taught you?"

"I taught myself." Sasori paused. Perhaps it was the inconsequential nature of their encounter – both being veiled, and him destined to leave soon, free to never come back – but he felt compelled to be truthful. "My grandmother showed me. She is… adequately skilled."

"Ah. And your parents?"

Neither had predicted the next move, and the spectator in fact shifted a bit in his seat when Sasori suddenly sprung into action, whipping both arms away, vaulting back through the air while the puppets fragmented and zoomed towards him – and then he was perfectly still again, having landed neatly on a throne formed of Benihashi's and Akaari's body parts. Their heads formed the ends of the armchairs, and Sasori placed his hands upon them. "My parents were never puppeteers. They were ordinary shinobi."

Of course, Sasori could have assumed this position with far less extravagant gestures. But for the past year, the mention of his parents fed some mad impulse.

...

4PM.

Four chuunin returned to the Sand, clutching at each other's shoulders for support, bleeding, stumbling and limping through the gates in the fading sunlight. Within the next ten minutes, the Third received a report, and he convened with his closest councilmen and the venerated elders at the Kazekage's office.

The Second World War had ended fifteen years ago, but those scarred by that age (like most elders), those brought up in its wake (like many councilmen), and those faced with the era that followed (like the Third Kazekage), always felt it creeping under the surface, constantly verging on re-emerging. Particularly the Third, in his youthful passion, was predisposed against anything potentially resembling a threat to the tender peace, and in the same spirit was confident in his own being righteous by crushing those threats.

Thus the news of trespassers becoming hostile when encountered, and supposedly scouting out territories, marking them for future purposes, did not surprise him, especially not after over a year of similar reports. And therefore he felt no remorse ordering the deaths of those trespassers, nor any regret sending his soldiers to end a war that had not yet begun.

However, he felt some reluctance when he made these orders if it occurred to him that he might not be protecting his territory, but preparing to take theirs.

If not to the surface, the Second World War crept closer to his heart. Hanzo the Salamander, the White Fang, the Legendary Sannin. In each war and in each era, many thousands fell, hundreds of those thousands at the hands of such luminaries. And in expectance of the last, the greatest of the Wars, they seemed to have appeared in more places than ever before, and though the Third was one such person, he didn't care to admit it, because the fact that he was only one such person disturbed him.

Pakura was powerful, but that was the extent of her potential. Goza was both powerful and wise, but was growing complacent after personal tragedies. Chiyo was powerful, wise and spirited, but she was old and would inevitably wither. Yes, the Third thought, they had few, true treasures and would be in a dangerous situation when trouble came.

Or when we brought trouble, the Third thought, hardly hesitating to send for Sasori. The boy would leave within the hour, and return within the next, the trespassers taken care of. He would be powerful, the Third thought, and he would be wise and spirited. He would last.

...

"They were shinobi?" Sasori refused to respond, but the spectator's next question struck a blow to his stoicism. "Were they any good?"

His fingers grasped the puppets' hair roughly. "No. They failed." He was not surprised by how little this truth affected him.

"Is that how you see it?"

"Shouldn't I?"

"I'm a shinobi, myself -"

"I know -"

"As were my parents, and most of my friends, and my son. And I am proud of all of them, especially those who have -"

"Who are you?" Sasori stood and glared down at the spectator, as did Benihashi and Akaari, recomposed and leaning over the spectator's shoulders, arms tensed for action. The spectator left his seat and stepped into the aisle, calmly, without a care for the puppets. Before leaving, he removed his conical hat and faced Sasori. He spoke softly and deeply…

...

Almost midnight.

The Third stood alone in the council hall, outside the single circular table at its heart. Light had long since faded outside, past the statues of his predecessors, and the electrical system had switched off for the night.

He waited for nothing in particular. Elders had come and gone with their ideas. The trespassers were thinning out, disappearing to wherever they had come from: forensics had to date found no concrete form of identification on them beyond what remained of their faces after battle. It was the perfect opportunity, the veteran Joseki would often say, to pursue suspected nations, whoever they were. To reclaim anything they said to have owned.

He watched his own statue, the image of his twenty-six year-old self made four years ago. Why did he look the same as then, and why did it look so much like his even younger selves? How long would he have this face? How long would he remain?

He turned to the place beside his statue. He was less certain of whether he would see the monument placed there than of whom it would depict.

"Sir?" He didn't answer or look to the door, but he recognized the voice of one of his assistants. "You're wanted in the sealing chamber. It's important."

The Third continued to watch the statues. "Is there something wrong with the host?" No answer came: he realized she couldn't know if he saw her nodding in the dark. He left and followed her out into the hallway. In the light, he would've seen through her disguise, a transformation constructed with paper. But it was dark, so he didn't, and Konan remained undercover.

...

The Kazekage stepped out onto the street, discarding the conical hat and closing the door to the theatre behind him – it slammed open a second after. Sasori, unmasked, dashed up behind him and grabbed his shoulder.

"This is none of your business! Hey!" Sasori spun him around, and the Third was fleetingly glad to see him so outraged, so outside himself. He knew little about parenting, but he knew children, ninja or no, sometimes should act out.

The Third gazed up the streets, noting it was empty but for a single man lying on a curb. The bars were mostly closed and only the streetlights shone brightly. It started to drizzle. "I know. That's why I didn't come until now. But you were late, Sasori… And…" He hadn't meant to bring up the misstep, however fatal it had been for five men. "You worry me."

They stared at each other for a while, the rain causing the strands of their equally thin but dense hair to slop down on their faces and neck. While the Kazekage brushed aside his thickly hanging mane, Sasori panted heavily through the raindrops. "You think you're better than me."

"That's not true -"

"Are you afraid you're going to die? Is that why you send me?"

There was no pity left. "Report to the gate officer for your mission. You have one hour, Sasori. Don't be late." The Third didn't stay to watch him leave.

...

Midnight.

Sand filled the vast metal bowl hung at the cylindrical chamber's bottom and overflowed into whatever dark place lurked below. Ancient pillars reached from the murky ceiling and plunged through the sand until it connected to the bowl's metal base. Far below the ceiling, sunlight flowed in from boxes in the walls via the work of some mystical seal.

A rock wall separated the long passageway from the Kage's building to the underground. It slid open and the Kazekage hopped down onto the dunes. He hadn't assumed to see the Ichibi thrash around madly, pulling the sand from its container to wreak havoc on its captors – but he thought he at least wouldn't be alone.

His assistant had turned back long ago, on his recommendation. He stepped farther in, looking around. He reached the centre, and after a minute he grew weary of the silence.

And then, his training told him to be suspicious. He didn't call out and instead scanned his surroundings, and he became aware of the shadows that lurked behind surrounding pillars.

"Hey."

...

The wheezing shout broke Sasori's concentration on the spot where the Kazekage had turned the corner. He turned around, somewhat confused. "What?"

A bumbling pile of weak limbs and abundant, sodden coats struggled to rise from the curb. "Hey," the drunk cried again, "you, stop, you, there!"

He rose half-crouched, arms stretched out for balance, then started forwards as if the earth had shifted and launched into a run to keep the momentum. Whether it was a charge or a cry for help standing, Sasori wasn't sure, but he caught the man nonetheless. "Stand," he said and pushed the drunk away.

The drunk stooped to pick up the Third's hat, wobbling, and he pulled it on low. Sasori only saw his wide chin and slack mouth ajar. "You… I saw you in there."

"Oh." He recalled the bottle-shaped heckle. "You didn't like it?"

"You're a," the man suddenly grabbed Sasori's wrist, but the puppeteer was not alert at all, feeling the weakness of the grip, "goddamn amateur! Worst thing I ever saw!"

"That so?"

"Damn right. But!" His grin was enormous, flashing wide, square teeth, and he tried to focus his small, black eyes on Sasori's. "You're not hopeless…"

...

Past midnight.

"Sasori?" He revealed himself to the Kazekage and glided across the sand, an all-black shadow against the white. The Third didn't bother to ask what was happening, pausing instead to let it all sink in. "That wasn't my assistant."

"No."

"There's nothing wrong with the host."

"Not that I know of."

"… You're abandoning your mission."

Sasori circled around him at a distance, occasionally moving behind a pillar: the fourth time he did so, an overweight, purple-eyed man in a black cloak stepped out, circling the other way. "You couldn't have had more than a few hours to prepare," the Third said and looked to the exit, which was blocked by wealth of plants and vines sprung from the wall itself, further guarded by a man in a conical hat. "Despite everything, I'm impressed."

"You should be." The sound of feet treading lightly on sand stopped, and the Third found Sasori's dull eyes. "And you should be grateful."

"I am. For everything you do for the village -"

"Not true." Sasori reached for the two scrolls in his coat. "If you really were grateful, you'd give me something in return."

"Like what?"

Sasori stopped, scrolls halfway pulled out.

...

Surprised by the shove, the drunk stumbled back and fell on his back. He started to get up while the boy before him looked about ready to run away. "Y-you're-"

"Yeah-"

"Hisago! But -"

"I died, didn't I? You brought me back halfway there, then I went - and came back." He tipped his hat proudly.

Hisago read Sasori's expression. His grin widened. He detected hope: behind the confusion and the shock, there was only hope. "Are you a spy?"

"Nope. Well, I am, but I was really dead. And I'm not spying on you." He chuckled, again finding reason to correct himself. "That's not right, though. I've been sending my people this last year to find someone just like you."

"The trespassers?"

"That's right, Sasori. You've been killing my people all year long. But that's alright." He took Sasori's wrist again, and then his hand, and Sasori did look this time. There were black stubs between Hisago's rigid fingers, like metal webbing. "Let's make it a trade, huh?"

Sasori yanked his wrist away. "You want my puppets?"

"I want the guy who makes them."

"And what do I get?"

In Sasori's mind, it was a rhetorical question. "What do you want?"

...

"It's too late, sir. I already have it." Sasori unwrapped the scrolls, and Benihashi and Akaari appeared.

The Kazekage shook his head exasperatedly. "Please, stop." Sasori removed his cloak, assuming his stance in a light, black T-shirt and standard sparring pants. He wouldn't look at the Third directly, staring somewhere above his chest instead. Though the Kazekage had no intention of fighting, perhaps because of some old muscle memory, he began to unbutton his formal, burgundy cloak while pleading. "You'll die. You'll _fail_."

The sand shifted, swept by the wild flight of the puppets. The sunlight shifted, blotted out by amassed particles of iron.

"You can't kill me, Sasori."

Sasori's eyes drifted up to the Kazekage's face, his oddly youthful face, and inspected its details thoroughly without seeing the mournful eyes – the eyes, the only part he couldn't replicate. "I won't."

...

After hearing Sasori's request, Hisago – Asura Path – barely kept a straight face. He put an arm around the boy's shoulders.

"Kid, as you can tell, I might be able to help you out. But a word of advice, to manage your expectations - try not to think of it as 'immortality.' It's more like a very long hangover..."

...


	4. IV: Yamashita Deidara

Differently wired - just go with it.

* * *

…

**YAMASHITA DEIDARA  
**_Better Than Fine_

…

**13 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"Sir," his aide whispered excitedly from the docile green, withdrawn stage curtain, "your cue is coming up."

Deidara hopped from foot to foot, wringing his hands, to the pleasure of their ravenous mouths, wondering if perhaps he was making a mistake - the suddenness of his doubt reinvigorated him and sent him striding out onstage, throwing his arms out to embrace the audience, which stood and sidled up to the stage's edge for a group hug.

"I don't have an introduction prepared," he shouted as they linked arms over the huddle, "I'd like this to be informal!" The front row, nuzzled up to his chest, cooed agreeably: satisfied, he released them to their seats and took his position in front of the deep blue background drapes.

"You may enjoy the exhibit at your leisure," he sung into a microphone as he zigzagged between display panels, glad to see fights were already starting throughout the museum hall over who was first in line to read the plaques accompanying his works. "I'll be doing a guided tour, which I recommend to anyone who would like to know the meaning behind –"

He stopped before he was disappointed. The crowd was content to examine his works independently. Undeterred, he started the tour in a distant corner of the museum, explaining his first display to an audience of none:

…

**6 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

One last stitch and then he was all wound up, the meager strings in his chest corking the pumping well they had put inside him. The slobbering grins in his hands worked as exhausts - the Tsuchikage's jumpy, sweaty doctors told him to relax and smile a little, and Deidara was encouraged when his palms obliged.

He laid back in his hospital bed just as one of the doctors whipped out a megaphone and shouted, "come see Yamashita Deidara, model A Deidara, first order unopened special edition Deidara!", the nurses pried apart the sterile white walls and slid them aside, revealing a sundried canyon, "six years and forty days old, forty inches tall, weighing in at forty-six pounds!", two doctors grabbed his skinny ankles and wrists, swung him like a hammock and threw him down the ravine with an ease that suggested he weighed no more than the fluttering polka dot gown tied to his body by little paper loops under his armpits.

He landed neatly on his officially appointed shinobi uniform-sandals, sliding down the spilling red grains and clean into the battlefield. His enemies were rogue shinobi, grizzled old foxes ashing cigars, handing dying comrades the last swig of a secret flask, begrudgingly rescuing once-rivals while declaring no one else may kill them – Deidara was sad to kill them, but a jounin supervisor, running alongside with a horn-shaped hearing aid and list of instructions, jostled him to "just stick some clay in, a bomb should pop out!"

His allies were old classmates, clusters of little genin marching over giant anthills and planting flags wherever they felled an enemy by enormous group effort, dressed in the scout's uniforms of ordinary children playing at the duties shinobi were saddled with. They weaved between the plumes of dust and fire left in the wake of Deidara's round clay mines, calling formations to each other and pointing at targets for their collective one or two shuriken, all the while ignoring Deidara's exhilarated waving and rousing battle cries.

Deidara didn't understand their stern indifference. He turned away from an old hand scowling at him with a bowie knife and saw the Tsuchikage on the balcony of his mansion, tossing clay marbles to a crowd of cheering civilians while the doctors proudly announced, "top shelf grand exclusive premiere state of the art Yamashita Deidara!", and it seemed to him his classmates should be just as pleased. Asking some insight, he looked to his jounin supervisor, whose resigned, self-defeating shrug told of a lifetime's worth of inattentive parenting. Deidara nodded sympathetically.

But he felt no less entitled to pursuing his newfound talent, searching out the enemy commander in the cluttered battlefield, spying the man among a group of ex-compatriots resolved to unite in the last act after two hours of loose cannon antics. He ignored his classmates' pleas to leave them the kill and rose above the din of the marching bands flooding the canyon.

Deidara stuck a bit of clay in one of his hands and the rogues were blown apart. A warm, breezy calm descended. He watched the seconds ago crowded plains, wiped clean and smooth and pure well into the horizon, and from the hole he had rent in the ground, blackness oozed, sputtered and finally burst out in a geyser of oil.

His experiment a success, Deidara spun around and raised his arms to his countrymen, laughing.

…

**2 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"You should give me a shot, yeah?" Deidara said to his prospective mother. She grimaced and declined politely, joining the tired women cobbled together in a corner of the Tsuchikage's council hall. The next kunoichi in the line trailing out the door stepped forward and took her place beside Deidara, on the hardwood floor by the raised plaster platform on which the Kage's desk was elevated.

"As you heard ten seconds ago," Onoki said, "the offer is, raise him as if he were your own, with healthy compensation, until we see it fit to exchange you. Deidara, state your case."

The ten-year old boy, his hair no longer done up in a pineapple stub ponytail, brushed back his long bangs and presented his most well-adjusted grin. "I'm a nice kid! I keep my room tidy and wash my own clothes, and I don't eat too much, and I always do my chores." He cast a tight smile to the Kage, who winked in return, both aware his chores involved a fair bit of untidiness.

"Very good. Ma'm?"

The kunoichi sighed, exasperated. "I guess, fine, it's my duty or whatever." She traipsed after her new son into the kitchen of their two-bedroom clay cottage, perched on a village outskirts hill in sight of the Kage's mansion, where she set to doing dishes while Deidara went on about his latest successful chore.

"And captain Kitsuchi said I did well, I think, he said the missing-nin were dead at least, he was probably distracted trying to stop my teammates," he gestured to his graduating class, lined up in a semi-circle around the kitchen, a vacant spot separating said teammates, their wet eyes stung by searing smoke billowing from a scorch mark on the floor between them, "I think they wanted to have a talk with me."

He was on his knees on the kitchen counter, dirt spilling off his sandals into her dishwater while he leaned out the window, catching fluttering letters from the Missions Office, jamming them down his right hand's mouth and releasing the clay birds that followed from his other hand. "You have no shame," his twelfth mother said, "no conscience at all."

Deidara shushed her and pointed out the window, to the faraway mountains past the village's borders, where the birds went to become violent sparks. "I think it's pretty."

"Whatever," Kitsuchi's prodigious daughter said, waiting outside the medic's tent with Deidara while the captain saw to the horrific wailing inside, her ten-year old face translucent in the night after hours of adrenaline and smoke-filled eyes, "doesn't seem that great to me. Doesn't seem worth the trouble."

"Mm," he half-heartedly agreed. Something odd bubbled inside him. There wasn't a hearing-horn or list of instructions in the world to explain it. One finger lifted, he traced the falling pyres of the birds, whispering, "art is subjective, yeah?"

…

**1 Year After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"From the official Academy textbook on jutsu! 'All chakra is, in its untouched state, pure and neutral. During molding, it can undergo a process called,'" he shot the court reporter a sharp look to make sure she was getting this right, "'nature transformation, turning it into one of the five basic elements: fire, wind, lightning, earth and water.'"

Children crawled in the barn rafters of the stone courtroom. "I point you to the section on advanced elements: 'However, not all combinations of basic elements result in advanced elements – in fact, jutsu that combine basic elements are not uncommon.'"

Deidara snapped the book shut and placed it on the defendant's desk. "I submit to you that my explosive clay techniques, which I have already proven are the result of molding earth- and fire-element chakra, are _not_, as the prosecution claims, 'a gross and experimental violation of physical laws.'" He pulled out the chair behind the desk, facing the jury of marching band trumpeters. "As a matter of fact, they are basic, natural – textbook. I rest my case."

He sat down, satisfied with the murmurs surging throughout the packed courtroom, regardless of whether they were dissentious or approving. Likely the former: he waved to a raging fan in one of the balconies being thrown out by security. Judge Onoki banged his gavel. "Quiet, quiet!" His nose reddened bitterly as he pondered the argument. "Good, that's all good and fine. (You lousy know-it-all pain my ass.) Does the prosecution have a response?"

"Yes! It! Does!" Han shouted exuberantly, armor rustling and clanking as he stood. Deidara cursed his rival, the other wild card powerhouse of the Rock. Or, formerly wild: the young jinchuuriki had a change of attitude after his mentor Roshi abandoned the village, and now he served the Kage obediently with none of the passion and reverence for his power Deidara had for his art.

Normally the embodiment of simmering moodiness, Han was bursting at the seams with joy over a chance to finally bury Deidara. "The prosecution calls Gari to the witness stand!"

"You've already questioned him!" Deidara whined.

"And I'm doing it again," Han boomed (Deidara was reluctantly impressed.) The spiky-haired, older, less successful result of the explosives experiment retook his seat in the stand. "Gari, sir, will you quickly repeat the last cross-examination? You can do both parts."

Gari nodded and imitated Han's murky baritone, "**are you familiar with the defendant?", **"I've heard of him", "**what have you heard?**", "better version of me, not that I could tell", "**what makes you say that?**", "he's a wild card", Deidara was happy other people saw him the way he saw himself, "friendly fire all over the place, no self-control", "**perhaps it is easier for you to control it because you're less powerful**", "by that logic, the Tsuchikage should be going around blowing up noblemen –"

"The Tsuchikage didn't put a bomb factory in his chest!" Deidara thought he stopped himself from adding, "he put it in mine, the coward", but he must have said it out loud because the entire thousand-seat arena erupted in explosive booing.

"Quiet! Quiet!" The Tsuchikage squeaked, hobbling up and down the field, trying to contain the indignation of his people – Deidara was confused, never having considered they might be displeased with the man who called for the experiment on him. "Enough!"

Out on the shore, Han was using a sacrificial bonfire to shadow-puppeteer an overzealous Deidara blowing up the lord's son under his protection during an ambush - at the Kage's outburst, the jinchuuriki removed his witch doctor's mask and kicked away the complementary drawings he'd sketched in the beach sand.

"Considering the difficult times we are in," Onoki said, "recovering from a war and all, we should be showing support for our money-bags, I mean lords, and vice versa. With that in mind, I ask the jury for their verdict." They unanimously answered not guilty. "Good, I'm glad we agree. I declare the defendant's explosive clay techniques a forbidden jutsu and bar him from active duty until I say otherwise."

The world cleared out of the courtroom in a heartbeat, leaving only three people. "Forbidden? But you…" Deidara held up his hands and showed two frowning mouths. "You gave me these. You said you need them." His arms drooped to his sides and he whimpered, "It was an accident…"

Onoki turned away. "Please read back the previous statement."

The court reporter read her notes. "The defendant, Yamashita Deidara, genin, at forty past six: 'I did it.'"

…

**7 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

The old construction manager went to the Moon Village to contribute his expertise in fortifications. The Moon had restarted the old conflict, insisting the Sun should be integrated. The Sun didn't agree. Deidara didn't understand either side's reasoning.

To him, their war meant that he was now the oldest person on his construction team, the new manager included. Ittan was a recently promoted, eighteen year-old chuunin (Deidara was a year older and a rank lower) who during his academy days had discovered a discrepancy in the chakra molding for Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall – changing a single handseal greatly reduced the chakra requirement and simplified creating various shapes for the earth walls.

It was one of those discoveries people couldn't believe had gone under their noses, an age-old jutsu revolutionized. The Rock tried to keep it a secret, but the practical little revelation inevitably made ripples across the world, until word got back to the village that the Leaf's Sandaime, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Professor himself, had corrected his use of the technique.

All thanks to Ittan, who was soon mistaken for a genius. It was a fluke and he knew it, Deidara could tell, he was too humble. It was just a neat little experiment that paid off. Of course it did, it was safe. It was a safe, bland discovery. Who cares about walls?

Thought Deidara, while the other genin unearthed the commissioned plot of land, flooded it with concrete and raised loadbearing walls under Ittan's orders, according to Ittan's blueprint, using Ittan's technique. "Ittantantantan," Deidara grumbled, leaning against an uncomfortable, weathered rock spire in the middle of the site, next to a flat new wall à la Ittan.

"Yamashita," Ittan called out respectfully (he was a decent kid, a splintered sentiment murmured through the corner of Deidara's mouth), "we need you to clear that."

Deidara begrudgingly lumbered away from the wall (he still had another year to be a teenager, he thought and showed off a voucher to anyone who thought him petty.) He fished a clay pebble out of his pocket and fed his right hand. "Clear!" He carefully split the spire's peak and crumbled the rest with a few punches.

How about that, he thought and followed Ittan's order to clean up by leisurely kicking the rubble aside. How's that for genius? How's that for a discovery? How's that for an experiment? That was pretty useful, wasn't it? Pretty _practical_. "Well, it's the Rock so they like rocks," his impression of a commoner mumbled. High Chief Deidara, senior partner on the Rock Disposal Committee, kicked aside another rock. "How's that for liking rocks?"

"What?" Ittan called.

"I said, clear!" Deidara shouted back perhaps a bit too quickly, a bit too aggressively, throwing his arms out to gesture at the flat concrete base stretching into the horizon.

…

**8 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

Forced to a knee on the pine forest's leafy floor, hands bound and roped to a slim stump, Deidara would have no part in the party's runaway success.

"But you're an active ninja again," said an old classmate, her ever-shrinking scout's uniform causing the dangerous levels of exposure that drew one of Deidara's captors to dance, "you're on the right track!" But am I walking it myself, he answered and showed his hands had been bound well before he was captured, as per the conditions of his re-enlistment.

"But you're a chuunin! The Kage didn't even test you!" Onoki's bodyguard-in-training, a brunette with a thin scar beneath his eye, joined the other missing-nin holding Deidara hostage in bouncing unfettered paper lanterns over the sea of writhing party-goers, filling the forest with the warm light of autumn.

Deidara promptly vomited his suspicions and used one foot like a brush in the puddle, sketching Onoki ordering his hands' mouths be sown shut. The scarred teammate laughed, his mirthful but wandering eyes betraying discomfort at the sight of Deidara's expulsion.

"You were more useful as a captive," Han interjected, heads taller than the slow-dancing genin crowding him, "they didn't know there were three of us, so one of us was able to ambush them while the other negotiated your release. Simple as that."

That's no way to spend your first mission as a chuunin – as a once-more accepted shinobi of the Rock – Deidara sulked and put his head to the ground shamefully (bits of earth flecked his lips and he wondered why he had never put the clay in his own mouth.)

Kurotsuchi laughed in her hideous way, the same way he did, the way they bonded, tonelessly and breathily, as if they were coughing violently. Gathered around a makeshift pinewood bar, a group of masked assassins whooped as she downed six shots in a row – face still screwed up from the taste, she turned on Deidara. "Your fault for getting caught. A net, Deidara? Did you not pay attention when they taught us the Replacement technique?"

The assassins solemnly agreed and raised a glass to Deidara's incompetence. I was out of class that day, he wept, I was out of class because of my operation! He tugged at the rope desperately, wanting to throw his arms out to them all so they could see his hands.

But he couldn't. There was a sudden bang as the slow-dancing genin, drifting aimlessly and enraptured by their partners, went circling into the barkeepers and his staff, who were bringing in the walls of the tavern rented for the party. The wall bearing the photos of venerated patrons went crashing into a trio of in-style lutists scoring the festivities with a lilting twang – they were helped back up and met with a round of laughed-off apologies.

One of the captors broke away from the fun and grabbed Deidara by the ponytail. "Alright, alright, let's get this over with!"

"What do you want for him?" Han shouted.

"Some dirt? I don't know, what's the exchange rate for nothing?"

Deidara cried out and reminded them all of model A Deidara, formerly unopened special edition Deidara, once grand exclusive premiere Deidara. Still state of the art Deidara.

"I'll give you an Ittan for your Deidara!" Han waved over Ittan, who was politely sipping sake through a colorful straw while Han showed him off eagerly. "He's _practical_!"

"Ooh Ittan, that's an Ittan, Ittan Ittan," the missing-nin debated with hushed esteem.

Deidara beat his head into the ground with frustration. No one heard the light thumping, low as it was beneath the din of haggling, music, titillated laughter, fight-shouts and drunk-shouts, and the ever-present but never so distracting cacophony of marching bands, the brassy high-pitched crashing screams of trumpeters, flutists and drummers all playing their own songs.

And no one saw that in a little pocket of his facial imprint on the earth, he had ground the dirt up into clay. He bent down and reached out with the tip of his tongue.

…

**12 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

Deidara refrained from climbing onto his kitchen counter. He didn't want to get dirt on it right after cleaning up. Instead, he went out on the balcony and held up his little drawing in the sunshine. It did wonders for his mood to perform this ritual every morning: not to mention his status, since the genin scouts surveying his movements saw he had turned to the finer arts. That day he drew a nice kitty.

His bike sailed along the even slopes surrounding the Village Hidden in the Rock, glossing over the urge to raise a hand to the village - to greet it. Instead, he kept busy throwing newspapers to the outposts on his paper route. National Secrets Daily, the Important Operations Post – Deidara laughed to himself at the thought of misplacing the papers as his bike flew off the slopes and gently drifted down toward the village.

While hopping down from cloud to cloud he would often see shinobi ascending the path by foot, probably on the way to some mission. They looked so busy, so stressed, so worn out. Deidara sat back in his recliner bike seat, glad he wasn't being dragged and tossed into that life anymore. In fact, he had been dragged and tossed out of it! "Drag him out," were Onoki's exact words, he seemed to recall, "and toss him out, too! (Until I say otherwise.)"

Deidara was glad the Kage eventually said otherwise. The bike landed on the wet clay streets, nice and comfortable for the villagers to step on, and slid to a very slow stop. In fact, it felt like years on that bike and even when its movement was imperceptible and he got off, Deidara thought it might go on for decades. He froze, scared by the possibility, and then continued, more scared that his genin supervisors would pick up on his momentary spell of peculiarity.

Next was the grocery store! Cats followed him down the aisles, scaling his body impassively while Deidara explained they weren't his. Then, the barber! He needed to cut his hair nice and short so he could wear his mailman cap. And the tailor, too, the uniform was a scuffed hand-me-down from the previous mailman, a uniform fit for whoever saddled with the job.

Handed the job, Deidara corrected himself with a tight smile to the bare, white walls of his entrance hallway, tracking a cool, screeching gale through the open door, white flakes falling on his freshly shaved head from a lone spot on the ceiling where the clay seemed to resist paintover, his arms weighed down by shopping bags full of officially appointed clothes, officially appointed food, his cut-off hair which could be turned into officially appointed wigs, and he tried to fill the silence, admitting with a final shrug, "this isn't so bad."

…

**13 Years after the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"Please, calm down –" The audience booed mercilessly, pelting Deidara with balled up show programs and crushed snack-boxes. "There's nothing I can do, the show's over!"

"We want our money back!" Someone set the blue background drapes on fire while the brawlers on the museum floor organized into strike forces and began to smash the display panels to the floor. "Two thumbs down," they roared in unison, "would not recommend!"

Deidara fell down and attempted to crawl off-stage, but his aide pulled him to his feet, brushed off the dirt and held his face. "Listen to me," he pulled and played with Deidara's cheeks, "it's fine if they don't like it, it's fine if they do. Either way, it's your show."

"But –" He tried to avert his wet eyes from his aide's purple, rippling ones. "But what if I can't make them happy?"

The display cases broken, his works escaped: white clay sculptures came alive and ventured out in the world to be seen, to be heard, to be known and experienced. But his gray-haired aide – Naraka Path – only smiled and winked. "Life isn't all happiness."

…

Something odd bubbled inside Deidara – and then it clicked. "That... that's right!" He spun around to his classmates, laughing dryly until his voice cleared and echoed musically throughout the sundried canyon. "Life isn't all happiness! Life is danger and pain and sacrifice, too!"

Itachi disagreed, appearing like a gentle mirage from the crows spurting out of the oil well. "I don't like it. It's too big and bright. I have very sensitive eyes."

"It is! But you've only seen a little part of it! There's small and dim, there's brief but sudden, there's even bigger and brighter –" He hesitated for a second, but five more purple-eyed stagehands cheered and urged him on. "There are so many varieties, they can't all be meant to be liked!"

Konan put down the dishes and planted a soft kiss on Deidara's forehead, for an ecstatic moment showing motherly affection that would have faded and died if dwelled on. "I think it's just fine, dear, don't you listen to those mean boys." She glanced toward the hallway off the kitchen, where they could hear the wails of two genin being held back by captain Kitsuchi.

"But they're right, too!" He soaked in the smoke from the scorch mark on the floor, briefly feeling the confusion and terror the lord's son must have felt, "and that's okay. Grief is just another sensation supporting the wealth of them – without it the whole thing crumbles, life becomes senseless!"

"Unacceptable!" Zetsu screamed and thrashed as security cut off the vines clinging to the balcony and ejected him from the courthouse. "Criminal, unfair, absolutely repugnant! What they did to you was _wrong_!"

"Criminal, unfair, absolutely repugnant." Deidara smiled peacefully. "But not unacceptable."

Sasori danced in front of the bonfire, spraying beach sand over the puppet jury, his shadow twisting and contorting to depict doctors slicing Deidara's chest and hands open while masked witch doctors summoned black magic to contaminate the wounds. "It's not really my style," Sasori said, "but technically speaking it has its charm."

"There's something in it for everyone," Deidara called over the sound of something clicking, clicking again, and again, "and if you could experience all of it, even for just a moment," the clicking didn't stop –

Sitting at the pinewood bar, Kakuzu wagged a finger at Deidara, nodded shrewdly and picked up Hidan's severed head to ash a cigar on the decapitatee's outstretched tongue. "I like this kid. He's on to something."

He tossed Hidan's head over his shoulder – it landed firmly in the overflowing cleavage of Deidara's fashion-backward classmate. Hidan was nothing if not pleased. "Gyahahaha! I just like the action, man! The part where everything blows up in your face!"

Deidara started tearing up again. He had found his soulmates. Kisame came surfing down the clouds on his bandaged greatsword, playing the devil's advocate. "Isn't it a bit impractical?"

…

"It's impractical! It's practical! Explosions have many uses!"

A gaggle of women shrieked in the corner of the Kage's office while clay spiders encroached on them. "They can destroy, yes, but they can also frighten, and from fear comes bravery, determination, survival – people's finest traits!"

Screaming for help, Gari struggled against the clay snakes tying his limbs to the witness stand. "And what's so bad about destruction? If there are parts of life you reject, why would you be sad to see other parts disappear? Should the world only consist of the things you enjoy?"

Genin scrambled around the construction site, chased by clay bats. They tore up the concrete foundation and started raising the rocks and the spires underneath – within seconds, they had built a carbon-copy of the village. "I suppose that would be nicer, but it wouldn't be very artistic, yeah?"

"Artistic?" In the middle of the front row, between the rest of Akatsuki, Nagato leaned back and put his feet up on the stage. "I'm not looking for art, I'm looking for your explosives."

Deidara grinned as the clicking rose to a fever pitch: he kneeled down at the front of the stage and pulled up his sleeves, revealing his hands gnashing their teeth and chewing on the torn sutures, clicking. "You found both."

His stagehands pried apart the walls of the theatre and rolled them away while the blue drapes behind him burned up - behind, far downhill, was the model village.

"Art is life!" Scouts scurried from outpost to outpost on the slopes, tripping on the clay balls spewed forth by a clay dragon perched on top of the Kage's mansion, while Ittan's walls at the base of the mountains were crushed by the ceaseless avalanche.

"Life is an explosion!" Crawling clay centipedes invaded every space of the village, biting onto each other's tails to form a detonation wire going through the grocery store, through the barber- and tailor shops, through the courthouse and cottage and hospital and academy.

"Therefore, art is an explosion!" Han brooded helplessly in the clouds, Kurotsuchi stood amazed in the moonlight, and the scarred teammate searched frantically for anything to look at besides the impending horror: the birds, all the clay birds, spreading in great ripples across the sky wherever wide eyes fell on them.

And the Tsuchikage, Onoki the Fence-Sitter, grabbed his own reddening nose and decided once and for all that yes, it had been a bad idea.

The marching bands played their shattered songs, and Deidara's hands devoured the pieces, gathering them to his chest. He raised his arms at his own pace, at his own discretion, and Rightie whimpered, "I don't want to," and Leftie hissed, "end it now."

Deidara put his hands together, and something bubbled inside him – he released it, drowning out the world, wiping it clean and smooth and pure, shouting:

**_KATSU_**

…


	5. V: Nobunaga Kakuzu, Pt 1

History will forget his brown eyes.

* * *

…

**NOBUNAGA KAKUZU  
**_Departing Gifts_

…

**53 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

Kakuzu knew a battle's end by the cinders. The acres that marked his side's initial territory had been turned into a blackened, ember-strewn crust far overtaking the enemy's. Few living men milled about, mostly his, inspecting and occasionally prodding bodies with the sharp ends of their spears, holding torches to the night sky.

A small squad of the enemy samurais had poorly chosen to chase him from their final stronghold in the eastern hills. Smirking, Kakuzu inwardly commended the few of them who survived the still-ongoing skirmish in the valleys and continued to charge after the unconscious officer hoisted onto his shoulder. It was a hopeless endeavor: were they to catch up, they would die. If they gave up, they would certainly be killed by his returning forces.

And if they fail and somehow survive, Kakuzu thought, they'll stick a blade in their own stomachs for the shame of it. He chuckled at the image while halting to grab the throat of a limping samurai who had sprung from hiding under the ashes. Other arm occupied, Kakuzu slammed the samurai down, head angled back into the ground, and stomped on the underside of his jaw until something pink and greyish oozed into the gravel.

Kakuzu whistled to a young, dark man not unlike himself, who was leaning against a spear and watching two other shinobi play-stalk a crawling samurai found playing dead. Grins were shared at the mess under Kakuzu's foot. He shook back his black hair and nodded to the barricade ahead: a long fence of swords, axes and spears, a summoning cleverly designed by Hashiba, an up-and-comer in their clan. Both began walking towards the fences, Kakuzu watching the tips of the bonfires lit past them.

…

"Don't you want some water?" The samurai glared. "Some food?" He stubbornly averted his eyes. "Hey… do you want women? We've got women. Took them from that village over west. It'll be easy, you're their hero –"

The samurai spat in the dark man's face. Nagamasu stood and shrugged at the dozen-or-so men in the tent, wiping his nose with the blue armcloth of their otherwise green-and-black uniforms. "He's got better taste than you all." The canvas walls swelled with uproarious laughter. Nagamasu cut through the crowd receiving curses and blows aimed in jest while some of the men swarmed on the samurai with questions and more sincere threats.

In the back, together with some of their food and arms supply, he found Kakuzu sat on a crate. His green commander's coat was unbuttoned, his arms hung limp over his knees, and with thin lips pursed gently, he watched his clansmen make a game of questioning the grim samurai. To Nagamasu, he looked at ease. "Poor man," Kakuzu said, "he thinks he's helping his friends by keeping quiet."

"I'm not telling him they're all dead." Nagamasu glanced at Kakuzu, who realized some superstition had seized him. "Maybe we should let him go. It's bad luck holding a man like him." He was careful not to say "good man."

"We need him."

"I don't think he knows anything…"

"He does." Kakuzu inclined to follow him. They stepped outside the tent onto dry grass and into pitch-black night. Sparse trees came into sight around them by the light of bonfires scattered throughout the settlement. The fence had disappeared. Most of the clan had gone to their tents, but a few stragglers huddled around the pyres, eating or humming music, recounting the past battle.

When passing by, they were greeted and, in Kakuzu's case, respectfully so. But they moved on, leaving the fires and tents and the camp, and climbed into the moonlight on a hill overlooking the southern river. There, on a flat, wide rock, they sat in seclusion.

"They hired the Inuzuka clan." In the east, Kakuzu could see smoke from the samurai encampment. "The dogs are en route for that base. They'll be here by noon tomorrow." He handed over the folded map he had taken from the officer's quarters. "We'll sleep tonight, but come morning we need to move fast." He cut off his last thought: "not that it'll help."

Nagamasu didn't read the map, instead idly tapping it to his hand. "Damn… I thought samurai hated us folks. They're getting desperate."

"Starting a war with the lords just because they're getting phased out… that was desperate." Kakuzu lifted a small piece of tinder he had brought from the bonfire and placed it in his mouth. The glow on the end inched toward his lips. "Hiring shinobi to help – that's economical. Hypocritical, but better that than death."

Nagamasu looked to Kakuzu, concerned. "We've got another base to destroy, farther east… Can we take the Inuzuka?"

Kakuzu placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled briefly. "Don't worry-"

"Kakuzu, sir." Behind them stood the young clansman Gamou, chest pushed out in a poor caricature of a man. His pants and hands were covered in dirt. "The graves are finished. Should we begin?"

"Thanks, kid." Kakuzu placed a hand on Nagamasu's shoulder. "Hold. Save your prayers until morning, Masu. It can wait until we've rested…"

…

The straw grass crackled briskly under the feet of a hundred men, a lively compliment to the bright, clear day, and a stark contrast to the occasion. It didn't occur to those present, who had no eye for the appropriate: except for in battle, ranks and formations meant little to them, and during the funeral they stood as they pleased, an uneven circle around the fifteen graves.

In that crowd, everyone clad in their varied uniforms that adhered only to the colours green and black, just three bore anything resembling ceremonial wear. Among those in white cloaks and fanged necklaces was Nagamasu, sitting in a triangle facing outward at the centre of the gravesite, hands together in prayer or in a handseal. Few knew or cared to ask what they really did, and the rest spent the time staring, or comparing the body count to recent ones.

Kakuzu was not one to ask, nor one to count, so he simply watched. When they finished, he performed his one ceremonial duty as popular leader of the clan. Their flag was carried through the crowd, and he received it. At the gravesite's heart, within the triangle the officiators had formed, he plunged it into the soil and raised it. Watching the black banner and red symbol of their clan – two dots separated by a solid, vertical line – was usually the only part of funerals that left an impression on him.

This time, however, the fresh graves stayed with him as well. Six hours later, the flag would be torn down by the Inuzukas when they arrived in search of Kakuzu's people. Before burning it together with the hurriedly abandoned campsite and crates full of captives from the past battle, they would determine by scent that clan Nobunaga had gone west.

…

Fire rained on the crates as the tent's incinerated beams fell to pieces. Kakuzu pushed three last clansmen to the exit, and just as they fled into the night, one holding up the other two, the ceiling collapsed on their leader. He turned and slashed a wide hole just above him, but it bunched and covered him anyways.

Though not harmful in itself, the collapse left him vulnerable for a second: aside from being blinded by the green canvas, from the outside he was clearly visible as a tall figure underneath. Kakuzu realized this and was more amused by the image than hurried to cut free.

Lights flashed past the canvas while he performed handseals. Outside, three dark-skinned, white-blonde men watched a bolt strike the tent from a low-hanging cloud, emitting a pulse and forcing the figure underneath to its knees. The figure shriveled as they approached, and they laughed, tearing off the canvas expecting to see Nobunaga's leader curled up pathetically. Instead they found a log.

Creeping towards them slowly from behind, Kakuzu picked up a lost knife from the ground. Although he was buying time for his clansmen, who were either fleeing from the burning clearing or fulfilling their last use as kindle, Kakuzu hardly recalled them in the excitement. It was not until he saw in the corner of his eye the clan's pride, Hashiba, lying immobile in the flames, that the battle lost its lustre.

The moment of introspection cost him: a tendril of lightning whipped out of the cloud and slapped the knife out of his hand, and the three men spotted him. Before they could strike him down, a voice boomed, "stand down!" Kakuzu, hands raised in surrender, did not meet their commander's gaze as he stepped around. Tall and pale, and otherwise similar to his dark clansmen in their typical white coats and black uniforms, he had the same victorious smirk as always, which had earned him the name Kaminari out of scorn more than reverence.

"Really, cousin, I understand I crossed some boundaries taking your work," Yotsuki K said, "but I'm not so good a friend as to hold my clan back for your benefit. When a lord makes a request, which they seem to do less every day, I will not refuse it." Glancing over the grounds, he added, "though now I see why you had trouble with one little samurai faction. This is rather poor retaliation, brash I'd say. I hope you enjoyed it."

"Blame it on the stress. The samurai have not been the problem."

"Oh yes, I heard about the Inuzuka. And the Fuuma, and the Kaguya. Hard times for the Nobunaga clan, it seems. I wouldn't suppose you're up for a change?"

Kakuzu frowned, disappointed. "Not this again." Kaminari laughed.

"Yes, this again. Now, at least, you must see the futility of this life. Living like stray dogs, fighting amongst ourselves over scraps. You'd do well to tire of it. The lords must've all heard of your recent troubles by now, and business will suffer."

"They'll leave me to the cold, I'm sure, but at least I'll be free."

Kaminari shook his head at his younger cousin's stubbornness. "Listen to me, Kakuzu… I've spoken with powerful men. Things will change soon, and the Yotsuki will be in the right place when it happens. Come with us to the Lightning."

"What about the Garden Country? You won't make it your first home anymore?"

"Most clans here have already been spoken to, and the rest are weaklings. You should be flattered I've asked the Nobunaga thrice."

Although he would be First Raikage within the year, Kaminari didn't have the same magnetism as Senju Hashirama. "I'm sorry, K. You'll have to keep asking."

Wrongly sensing contempt between the two, the other Yotsuki-nin readied their weapons. But Kaminari saw by the light of the thunder a man at a loss for solutions. "Then, for the Nobunaga's sake… grow stronger, by any means…" Kakuzu was surprised to see his air of aloofness fail. "Go back to the Jungle Country and ask your elders… Nagamasu, too, he should know… You really shouldn't, but at this rate… Old powers, old, old powers…"

"What are you talking about, K?" Unlike his cousin, Kakuzu exuded nothing but interest. "What power?"

…

"Just up here, they're waiting inside. They've already started the ceremonial bit. Even Honin came, as you can hear. She almost walked right off the path, she can barely keep her eyes open these days. Oh, she sounds like she's going to blow her lungs out. Wait for it - there it is. F sharp, I think? Ha... Sharper than any knife. I hardly know why we're doing this, her and a songbook would match any army..."

Two arcing paths were carved into the cliffside, across its middle. Shrubs and vines hung from the paths' edges, pruned at their converging point, where two new paths appeared: one lead down the outcrop of rock, through the waterfall and to a view of the winding lake and impenetrable jungle below; the other lead inward, to the cliff caverns, through a black rock hole, past scrolls piled on either side of the entrance in an attempt to ward off misfortune, or perhaps to contain it.

They reached the crosspaths.

Kakuzu heard silence and asked, "will I change?"

Nagamasu didn't know. "I believe so."

Kakuzu was not capable of believing like Nagamasu was, and so it was a simple matter of retaining himself, of taking their faith for his use without losing himself to it. He didn't think the Grudge more than a name - he headed into the caverns without so much as a last look the other way, to the waterfall, unaware his burden would be insatiate thirst.

…

**52 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

Kakuzu went alone to the graveyard. He had dug graves and chosen burial sites, but he rarely saw them twice, and when he did they hardly bore marks of human presence, being overgrown with weeds or washed clean by the rain. A silent, stationary place where all the dead were laid to rest seemed a horrid idea to him, and so he never again took the short walk from the village to that well-groomed, fenced-in area in the jungle.

But he went there once, alone, not to see any grave since the ones who had been buried so far were all elders, whose peaceful and belated deaths he held no respect for. He went there for a morbid exercise in guilt, to see how small the area was, how much it would need to grow to hold all the bodies that would be piled up because of his failure.

He looked down at the protector in his hand. He had failed in his last attempt to preserve the clan: they had chosen the symbol of a waterfall over that of the Nobunaga.

…

**49 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

_Their shadows were over him, haunting wild, fresh air putrified by war noise. He scrambled to unroll his last scroll and conjure a protective cage of giant chakrams. They spun, shredding his pursuers: the strips of fabric and flesh that struck his shoulders and forehead first passed through a mist of blood._

Over the first two years of the Hidden Waterfall's existence, the attendants of its councils varied. Originally the military general was always present, until he came to trust the chief, Mitsuhide. Prominent civilians once sat in to discuss the village's construction. Members of the first jounin line-up would attend until they were rarely home from missions. Afterwards, the only recurring councilmen were elders and white-cloaked ninja like Nagamasu – with one exception, who always sat in the shadier corners of the stone temple sanctum, away from the others.

_The summoning ended, exploded into smoke: surrounding chaos made itself known with muffled booms through the thick hum in his ears. Crouched low to the ground, he saw another object spat by the whirl of carnage: a forehead protector._

"How could the man who controls the tailed beasts have been killed by one?"

"Was he? I've heard the Kyuubi disappeared without a trace."

"Regardless, we can't dwell on it. What matters is the First Hokage is gone, leaving all hosts unchecked."

"You think they would rebel? Stage coups? They certainly could…"

"No, nothing like that. Within all villages, like the Waterfall, I am sure there is a strong sense of camaraderie… On the other hand, between the villages…"

"You think -" There was boundless respect between the councilmen, and so the elders fell silent to hear even a comparably younger man like Nagamasu. "You think there will be war?"

_Smoke thinned: fire flashed against the metal emblem. He hadn't studied the village symbols, but during this battle he had become familiar with the Grass protector. There were only fifty present, but to him it seemed hundreds of them roamed the smouldering remains of the forest. Perhaps he confused them with his Waterfall kin, or the crowd was swelled inestimably by helpless Garden Country soldiers._

"It's possible," Mitsuhide muttered in his creaking tone. He chewed his words, choosing them carefully. "Yes, I think it likely. There is motive for every village: the great villages without hosts will take them, the great villages with them will lust for more, the small villages with hosts will become suspicious of one another, and the small villages without them will be prey."

"Then it would be best if we drew no attention to ourselves," Honin croaked from her end of the long, stone table. "As we have no power comparable to that of a host –"

She was interrupted by a deep grunt of dissention.

_To the left, his comrades had taken cover behind great walls of earth, which they occasionally sent crashing down on the troops trying to breach them - straight ahead, Nagamasu and his squad had decimated the last of the Grass' trenches and were chasing its survivors into the red horizon - and to the right, he saw a massive, blue horn was rising over the hill, blotting out the rising sun –_

"You're right. I will take a host," said the voice from the black corner. Even Honin, who could scarcely see a thing, stared into it. "Send me to the Garden. They're weaklings."

"But," Nagamasu sputtered, "we can't start a war with the Grass now! If we fail, we'll be helpless to stop any other invader!"

_Following the ascending horn was a sparkling helmet and four slimy, far-spanning wings. The being fluttered over the hill, so close to the ground the beating of its wings scattered the confused masses below. At the base of its torso, where its blue armour met its scaly, greenish underbelly, a man – the host – drifted in and out of soft, clinging skin like a body floating in water. He bellowed to the battlefield, and the Nanabi cried a summon of crashing thunder.  
_

_Retreating squads threatened to trample him, and the more opportunistic shinobi might've taken this chance to throw a well-aimed kunai, but like him most could not think of anything but fleeing, or otherwise looking on with detached wonder._

"The Lightning and the Earth should be your only concern, and they will go to the Wood, and the Mountain and the Volcano, respectively. Those three are closer and have what they seek, and by the time we will as well, they'll be sated." He paused, considering that all these assurances meant little to him, accurate or not. "Or, if you'll let me, I'll go alone. I'll pretend I've gone rogue and they won't be able to prove otherwise."

His friend and elders were too stunned to argue, aside from the chief. "You would go alone?"

"Either way, I'll take the target."

_The hill's peak and valley vacated, one could clearly see a green-and-black man weaving through the lightning strikes. He ran through a pool of writhing blackness, and occasionally claws lashed from the pool and at the beast. Finally, two pierced its wings, wrapped around its core and tore it out of the sky._

Only one of them didn't mistake his impressive confidence for devotion. "You would do this for the Jungle?" Nagamasu peered into the darkness and searched out the unnatural, white-on-black pupils as well as he could. "For the Waterfall?"

_The Nanabi came crashing down to earth, and awaiting the beast and its host was Nobunaga Kakuzu, the Grass commander's body held firmly over his shoulder._

Kakuzu stared back and smiled as broadly as he ever had underneath his mask, imagining what glories lay ahead. "If you like."

…


	6. V: Nobunaga Kakuzu, Pt 2

**NOTE: **Longer chapters split in two. Read part one first.

* * *

...

**NOBUNAGA KAKUZU**

_Departing Gifts, continued  
_

...

**22 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

Allowing himself a heavy breath Kakuzu chased down the last of the spies. On second thought, Kakuzu thought while lazily dodging haphazardly thrown shuriken, that wasn't true: lately his breath had come fast at the slightest run, and leaping through the dense jungle like this yielded no better results.

Kakuzu threw his body off the branch. Halfway to the ground he reached up, and black threads wrapped around an unseen tree: while swinging he slashed through the shrubs with a short blade drawn from his waist, until the Sand spy returned into sight.

He slowed down when he drew too close, wanting to extend the chase just a bit longer. Emergencies were rare lately, even ones as unproblematic as this, and the vague possibility of mortal combat enticed him more than whatever bureaucracy and information-gathering the village had in store for him.

Behind a trembling mirage, the spy disappeared. Kakuzu charged through the haze and paused on the next branch. He let the stitches snap out from five areas on his back: two masks slithered out of his sleeves and disappeared into the jungle, trailed by threads. In their absence, Kakuzu felt weak heartbeats in his lower back, between his shoulder blades and behind his left kidney. He charged on, listening intently to the two heartbeats in the jungle.

The sound soothed him, and he sunk into his usual, simple chain of thoughts: the mission at hand; past battles; the War; glory; funerals; the last time he had seen the banner of the Nobunaga fly. With each passing year, that one memory had grown stronger – thirty-one years later, he could see it clearer than ever.

But it faded from his eyes, and in its place Kakuzu saw the jungle. He looked down and deduced from the bloody husk on the jungle floor that he had caught the spy in his daze. He felt two heartbeats creep up his sleeves and to his back - and in his hand, inside a tube of black wires piercing the husk's chest, he felt a third heartbeat soon to join them.

Though it was no longer of value to him, Kakuzu felt compelled to bring the body. Walking home, his breath came slower.

…

"Kakuzu. Follow me, I need to speak with you."

"What is this about -"

"You killing infiltrators. We don't even know what he was doing here, and now we'll never know."

"He was here to learn things, not share them."

"You idiot… you're an idiot! Do you even know what's going on around you? They're scouting for targets! The Great Nations are looking for places to expand, and you just put us on the Sand's blacklist! Let go -"

"Who told you that? Who told you- is it true? The Great Nations… they're preparing to attack?"

"Let go! Dammit… Weren't you at the council last night?"

"Last night?"

"They called in all the jounin -"

"What? No one told me about any meeting, kid -"

"Kid. Ha..." Gamou pushed past him and continued down the street. "You're already rotting, old man. Better find somewhere soft to lie down."

…

Kakuzu moved slowly through the village at the jungle's heart. He kept his peculiar eyes so open he earned disturbed glances from civilians and genin, to take note of everything. He noted how many roads and boardwalks and bridges had been built, in the treetops, over the muddy soil, across the rivers, since he last paid attention. He noted how many shops had opened, and how many homes had been filled. He noted how many pale faces had appeared, and how many dark faces he didn't recognize.

He walked so slowly evening turned to night, and then he noted that there were no bonfires, only lanterns and occasionally gas lamps, and that he heard little song and play, and only distantly from inside apartments. He noted there were four temples. He passed three of them several times, and noted each time that civilians and ninja who happened to walk by quieted down and bowed their heads slightly, understanding and acknowledging whatever lay inside.

He took this walk many nights after that, and ended each with a visit to the fourth temple, from which the village was governed. He went inside, crept into some crevasse, and waited until light flooded the stone floors.

…

"It's certain, then?" Nagamasu wasn't sure who spoke. It was too dark to see the farther ends of the stone temple clearly, and his hearing had begun to fail him. Forbidding fire from the temple seemed less sensible with each visit. "The Earth is mobilizing?"

"Supposedly they've positioned a majority of their military troops along the southern to western borders, with two regiments near the Volcano and Mountain countries. Supposedly the Wind is doing the same in the north." Nagamasu wondered what such a young person was doing in the council.

"Still, we'll potentially be in the thick of it, and we're exposed to Rock shinobi. Should they set their sights on us…"

"What about the Leaf? Our talks with them have been going well, and they've reached out to many villages… many, but not the Rock. Surely they'd help us if we were allied."

"Ha!" Finally, someone Nagamasu recognized: that runt, Gamou. "You're right, the Leaf and the Rock are rivals, and that's precisely why the Fire will seek to expand as much as any Great Nation. Not to mention they're already allied with the Grass, which would like nothing more than to see us chased out of our own country."

The chief, Mitsuhide's son and successor, cleared his throat. "Those are old grudges. Let's not put ourselves in a bad position over them. But I am concerned about the Rock. They have two beasts, and they've learned to control them well. We have one, and our hosts have never excelled." What a reasonable man, Nagamasu thought, and frequent visitor of the temples.

"Should we face a beast in battle, we have defensive forces prepared."

"We can't set aside entire squads for the beasts, not against the Rock."

"Our sealing techniques -"

"They're just experimental -" The discussion picked up speed, and Nagamasu was surprised to hear who he thought were some of the older councilmen debate heatedly. An old thought occurred to him.

"The Earth Grudge. It's worked before." He was surprised by how easily the words came to him.

"Absolutely not!" Someone called from the table's hazy ends. "The Fear is forbidden. It's a despicable ritual."

"It's produced some of our finest shinobi -" He didn't know then why he added "some of", but thinking on it later he knew the one case frightened and shamed him.

"It has produced monsters." The chief spoke with the same stern finality he had on the night they had outlawed the technique, when rumours of another war had first arisen. "It's an inhumane, unholy, barbaric, outdated -"

Something rustled and thudded to the floor in the darker corners where no one could see, regardless of how close they sat. Nagamasu thought it was a footstep, but the silence that followed did nothing to confirm his suspicion.

…

Each thump reverberated through him one time, two times, five times: the heartbeats always grew weak too soon, but somehow, this time, they failed him all at once. He stumbled down the stone steps and into the night, clutching his left arm, breathing quickly and harshly. He fell onto the board street and began to walk on the paths high in the branches.

However, the sound of his thick boots thumping against wood nauseated him, and his feet searched blindly for earth and grass - he slammed against the railing and fell, hurtling down into a river. He thrashed about there hopelessly, fumbling for an imaginary rescuing hand until he grasped the muck of the riverbed and climbed up, gasping and trembling, onto damp, fertile land.

He tore off his mask, his muzzle, and threw up water, and after a bout of violent coughing, squirming black threads. They began to crawl away, and he desperately tried to catch and press them back into his mouth - but they slipped between his fingers, and then out of his stitches, and began to burrow into the ground. They dug deeper and deeper, until they began to pull at the hooks in his skin through which they were threaded: and soon Kakuzu was too weak to resist, so he laid down on his stomach, and by the wires stretching over his limbs and back, he was slowly dragged into the ground.

…

"Would you like something to drink?" The silence only worsened Nagamasu's nervousness, and he felt bad that the mere presence of his old friend unsettled him so. He stepped out of the round wood-and-brick kitchen and into the hall. Usually he couldn't help but look at the framed photos of his small family during that brief walk, but this time he kept his eyes on the back of Kakuzu's head, jutting out over the sofa in the living room.

He faced the glass wall to the backyard, possibly taking in the view of the village from high on the hill, but his face was bathed in light and Nagamasu could only tell it was unmoving.

He sat in a wicker chair by Kakuzu and saw he was in fact staring out, if unfocused. He posed a few more polite questions – how he was, if he had eaten, what brought him there – but Kakuzu only continued to stare, until his eyes quietly and slowly travelled toward Nagamasu's. They then lifted slightly, until it seemed to him Kakuzu was staring at his greying hair. He made no remark, waiting until Kakuzu spoke. "I heard about Gamou."

"He was absolutely right. The Rock went for the Grass – and while the Leaf stopped them, the Grass came for us. We're lucky his patrol spotted them, or they might have made it to a town. Or here."

"That leaves us. A clan of two." Kakuzu turned again to the village, and Nagamasu didn't mention his children, whom he had never introduced. Besides, they didn't have the name Nobunaga. Kakuzu squinted, possibly smiling beneath his mask. "You know, Masu, I've been thinking."

"About what?"

"About lives. How much they're worth." He sat up in his seat and gestured, suddenly animated. "Sometimes I regret what we did to the samurai, Masu, they were clever men! Have you heard of the Iron's code of honour? It states that if a man, any man, challenges and defeats a samurai of the Iron, they earn their place in that country. Essentially, any strong person is free to trespass, and they'll allow it because above all, they value strength. Did you know it's the same with hosts? You probably didn't, but I've spoken with some of them. I spoke with the Nanabi's. Do you know why human hosts were at first such failures, and why they then succeeded? Because of respect. Through repeated attempts to harness them, humans earned the beast's respect. The Rokubi, I think the Mist has it, is up to its fourth host already, and it's performing exceedingly well. I'm sure I've reported all of this. You could say the beasts have been domesticated. But here's the thing: if it's the man being exchanged, isn't it the beast who's the host? It's them who grow wiser, and calmer, and thus learn to cooperate with humans. If they choose against it, they can destroy the host: it's them who earn cumulative experience. It's the same with clans. Do you know who is currently Third Raikage? Yotsuki V. Third Hokage? Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Second's pupil. Third Tsuchikage? Onoki, the Second's pupil. Past experience, strength, is inherited, and will continue to be passed down, growing forever. And that is how we valued things, Masu. We kept things with experience, and we threw away things without. Remember, Masu? We never interrogated the women. You of all people should remember."

He quieted. There was a faint chime. Some unknown bell from the village. Nagamasu rubbed his tired eyes. "Um… The war, Kakuzu… I need you to know we're not fighting. We're staying out of it."

"I figured so. Is that why you didn't tell me about the councils?" Nagamasu's face remained in his hands.

"They were worried you would want to fight. They decided we need to stay out of the war at all costs -" Startled by the sudden onset of Kakuzu's coughing fit, Nagamasu rushed to get him some water. When he returned, his friend was gone.

…

More because it had never happened before than because it did, the elders jumped at the sound of the stone doors sliding open too fast and hitting the walls. Likewise, the sight of Nobunaga Kakuzu in the sunlit parts of the inner sanctum surprised them more than his exhausted limp and clutching of his left arm.

Their calls came slowly, and he hazily saw them stand, though none came to help him. He fell against the end of the long, stone table. Gripping its edge, he focused all his strength on standing, and seeing, and soon their faces took shape, though he still recognized none.

Someone wondered what the matter with him was. Someone older explained. Several drew away in fear: others distanced themselves deliberately and whispered to each other. Only the chief, at the other end of the table, remained perfectly still.

"Let me…" The corners of his mouth twitched. "The Grass…" Someone nearby finished his request incredulously. Someone far away affirmed their suspicions about him. "Then…" Kakuzu's balled fists reached across the table and his head dropped onto the stone. "A villager… just one…"

An incensed hush went around the table, broken only by a scoff from its far end. Carefully, someone lifted Kakuzu – "Masu" – his arm over their shoulder, and placed a hand on his chest. Feeling the ravenous creeping of threads rather than a heartbeat, they jerked away and dropped him to the floor. He laid there convulsing, his lips too weak to move against his tightly wound mask.

Just one, he thought, haven't I earned one? The masks on his back opened their mouths but failed to scream, and he turned over to oblige their desire to reach upwards, arching his back. "I'm worth one, aren't I?" No, he knew, he was worth many more. Many – he realized the masks, too, were gagged, and reached up feebly to pry off his own mask – many more.

…

He leapt miles through the treetops, swinging between branches while slashing bushes and all else out of his way. He trudged hurriedly through the mud, stomping his feet into and ripping them out of the sludge without breaking his pace. He swam against the rivers, furiously beating the stream until it turned in his favour and moved him at breakneck speed into the lake.

There he climbed onto the rocks and ran alongside it, until he reached its end and dove down, down past the waterfall, into the vast pool below. After that there were still the deep and impenetrable jungle and the countless dangers within, but he chose to go on. He did, and he never stopped - and his breath never quickened again.

…

**6 Years Before the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

Dropping the body perhaps a bit too roughly, Kakuzu smashed the desk to bits. With a nasty screech (from both his chair and mouth), the effeminate, ponytailed redhead behind it slid back into the yellowing wall of the dingy office. "Hey!" Whimpering, he picked splinters out of his slate wool pants. "I expect you to pay for that…"

"With my commission," Kakuzu held his hand out, "that won't be a problem." Begrudgingly, the redhead lifted a shattered drawer from the floor and searched out two billfolds.

"Hey…" He spotted, in the streaks of daylight from the blinded windows, a pool spread under the corpse, and he jumped up on his chair to protect his purple boots. "The guy's still bleeding! What the hell?"

"Oh yeah." Kakuzu spared the mess a glance, more than what could be asked from him when he was counting his money. "I kept some parts. Hope it's no trouble." Satisfied with the sum, he pocketed the money in a pouch on the inside of his green, sleeveless coat. "Nice doing business. Let me know if there's more."

"Wait! What about my office?" Again offering more courtesy than he had in years, Kakuzu waved to the redhead who, once he was halfway out the door, hopped down and tip-toed after. "You said you'd pay me back!" Still not catching Kakuzu's attention, the redhead grew desperate. "I-I got another job for you!"

Kakuzu paused, already in the hallway of the motel's top floor. "What's that?"

"A job, a job! Yeah, look!" He turned around and got on all fours, sifting through the rubble. Only having met him twice and already being sure he'd never wear out his pants' knees that way, Kakuzu decided to take the man-boy seriously. Leaning against the doorframe, his patience was rewarded with a flyer – a typical bounty.

Except the headshot and the caption underneath were anything but typical. "The Grass chief?"

"Mhm."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Well -" The flyer floated to the floor and Kakuzu was away. "Listen to me, Kakuzu! This isn't your usual contractor, I'm telling you! I've been talking to these guys for weeks -"

"Then you're either a dope or a lunatic, and they're both."

"They're the ones who took the Kazekage!"

This time Kakuzu stopped out of genuine interest rather than rare curtness. He turned around, hiding whatever emotion could show with only a small square of your face visible. "You don't say?"

"Really! That's what I'm talking about, these guys are serious! And he was just the first step, they want another top-ranker out, they want to get the ball rolling for something big, something -"

"War." The corners of his mouths twitched. "They're trying to start a war, is what you're saying."

Hiroyuki – Animal Path – nodded, grinning breathlessly. "And that's just the beginning of it. They don't want to just start wars. They want to control them. Produce them."

Kakuzu crossed his arms. It was ambitious, if his redheaded middle-man had understood things correctly, but he had heard wilder things. "And how the hell are they going to do that?"

"I don't know," Hiroyuki said with a shrug that hid the extensive insight he had on the matter, "all I know is, they need lots of money, and you're just the guy for that."

"Fair enough. What's the job, then?"

"'Uh… Well, they said they want to see you first, actually."

Simply and without hesitation, Kakuzu reached out and clamped down on Hiroyuki's neck. "Now, you're not trying to set me up, are you? Send me right into the ANBU's base? I don't blame you, that'd be great. You do the math, my bounty must be world-class by now."

Hiroyuki shook his head and waved his arms with perfectly false fear. "No, of course not! I mean, you're right, you are, that's why they want to meet you!"

"Too goddamn bad, they'll have to come to me, when it suits me. And if they try anything, I'll bring them here and mess up your office some more."

"Fine, fine!" Kakuzu allowed him to stumble towards the remaining, intact piece of furniture: a metal file cabinet. "Alright, I'll talk to them, they'll meet you wherever you like," Hiroyuki slid open a box and pulled out a black square, "there's just one condition. You have to wear this…"

Kakuzu took the neatly folded black cloth and looked upon its red cloud symbol - though he didn't show it, he was briefly startled by the image. Before he unfolded it and found a cloak, he thought he was holding a banner.

...


	7. VI: Ichibei Hidan, Pt 1

Those corrupted by possessions were exempt from the torture of virtue and wanting.

* * *

...

**ICHIBEI** **HIDAN**  
_Invocation_

...

**6 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

From the canyon's brim, a torch would fail to penetrate the dark of night and depths: to find Masaki Village and its mines, one had to take the bridges and walkways down, at the risk of falling to an unremarkable death.

Hidan went, but stopped just within reach of the moonlight and sat perched on a wooden railing there. The path was narrower at the top, but below, the darkness was suffocating. He was confident he would only need to see his opponent, so he sat there, head bowed, wild, silver hair drooping as if he were melting into the black.

To pass the time, he whistled. He didn't stop when two shuriken flew at his head, nor while blocking them, and not at all after jumping back to face a well-concealed ninja.

"Who are you?" The blue-masked assassin sounded as calm as Hidan, in contrast to his wary lurch and stiff, raised arms. "What do you want?"

Hidan whistled a bit more before answering. "Your client sent me. Wanted to make sure you did your job."

"Distrustful."

"Can't blame him, considering."

The assassin chuckled. "What can I say? Aritomo gave me a better offer, even with a knife to his throat. Those miners should be grateful I take down-payments, or they would've been out a lot more money."

Hidan raised two thin eyebrows. "Not too grateful… considering." He nodded to the older ninja's bloodstained shoes.

"I guess not." He showed and rustled a small pouch. "I've got the rest of their payment, like your boss wanted. So if you've got my money, we're done here, right?"

Hidan nodded, eyeing the little bag. Life savings. "You'd think so."

Almost indiscernibly, the assassin returned to stiff wariness. "Shouldn't I?"

"Nope," Hidan answered, whipping out a sharp pike.

"Wait!" He raised the miner's money. "Why don't we split this and call it even? Tell your boss they never had the full fee."

Hidan approached with eyebrows furrowed. Reaching out carefully to take the pouch, Hidan must have, for a moment, looked contemplative to his peer, possibly agreeable.

…

"Oh… Perfect, go on –"

Aritomo took extraordinary pleasure in the young actress' massage for someone whose day had been relatively short: woke up at three past noon, had lunch with some lord's son and his party, met the fellas for drinks and a show (some ghastly tragedy insisted on by one of his more tasteful friends), had dinner at the club with a few of the show's lovelier extras, one of whom he subsequently brought home. Not much to wind down from: perhaps it was middle age that pained him.

And the lady's less-than-experienced hands were outmatched by his down-stuffed recliner in the effort of comforting him. But since they were alone in his smallest, coziest living room, warmed by the sparking fireplace and alone in the late evening, he knew it would serve him better to pretend otherwise.

"How's this?"

"Ah!- ah, sure, that's –"

Under different circumstances, Aritomo would have appreciated a merciful interruption. Even the shock of having the door slammed open by an uninvited visitor would have abated had he thought he could use the moments thereafter to speed things along with his first guest. But when the new arrival was his recent hire, Ichibei Hidan, his plans for the evening seemed less urgent.

"What the hell?" the actress shrieked, and a rattling gasp escaped Aritomo, mainly because she had relinquished his shoulders.

"Didn't know you had guests," Hidan responded with a too-knowing grin to the girl while tossing a hefty bag onto Aritomo's carved desk, "but I'm guessing this'll interest you more."

And from the way the fading-blonde nobleman leered at the bag, Hidan could tell he was right. "Kanako, why don't you step out for a moment?" The bewildered actress disappeared into the hallway. "It went well, I hope?"

"Just like you wanted." Hidan dropped into a recliner opposite his client. "What's-his-face killed the miners and took the rest of their money. I killed him and took that money and your commission." He gestured at the bag impassively. "And you stay out of the red."

Aritomo sat up, frowning. "That's not important," he lied, "what matters is showing those lowlifes - Hire someone to kill me? Me?" Livid, he looked out over the room, over the photos of himself and royalty, over the smoothly grooved wooden walls, as if they said enough. "Scum, that's what they are. Pathetic."

Hidan picked at his left middle fingernail, where there were still specks of blood. "Well, they resent you. It's not easy down in the mines… and people take it for granted they can complain."

Aritomo scoffed. "They can complain all they like. As long as it's not to someone important -"

"Or you schedule an inspection from someone like me. Right."

He had turned his attention to the nobleman, who now noticed some opinion forming behind those dull, black eyes. Moving immediately to suppress it, Aritomo smiled tentatively, reaching one hand out slightly to telegraph contact without making it. "Speaking of which, Hidan… There's bound to be some talk down there now… Why don't you go down there and set the tone?"

"Mm. What's your offer?"

Aritomo checked his thick wallet. "Enough to keep you going."

He flashed his handsome grin again, confident that settled things. Hidan looked at the bag. "You're already paying me quite a bit. Kind of makes me wonder why you even wanted this."

"Oh, I don't need that." And true to his words, he knocked aside the bags, sending the silver coins inside rolling onto the finely woven, red carpet. Putting away his wallet, he didn't notice Hidan's gaze, obscured under his messy hair, stayed on the coins. "Like I said, it's about putting those fellas in their place."

"Then why kill them? Why not 'schedule an inspection'?"

Aritomo shrugged. "Easier. Cheaper in the long run." He turned his attention back to Hidan, smiling and reaching out properly this time. "What do you say?"

Hidan shook his hand, while inside his jacket, his still bloodstained finger hooked the loop of a kunai.

…

Smoke draped Hidan's body and formed plumes in his wake. Despite the small protection of a facemask, merely opening his mouth should have sent him reeling for fresh air – but it was open, laughing, as he plunged into the haze.

The miners heard the foreboding cackle, and stepping over the rocky threshold into the light of tin lanterns he was greeted by the unmistakable faces of oppressed men. They dispersed under his unnerving glances, made way for his stride through the cramped tunnels, and regardless of age or size they trembled before this young man.

The tunnel broadened into one of the central digging rooms, where three dozen men stood in a great circle and hacked away endlessly at the walls in search of ores and gems. Those flanking the tunnel dropped their pickaxes at the sight of him, but in the faint light and amongst the clangs of iron and the pangs of coughing, the three brothers far beyond the sulfur mist, his targets, noticed nothing.

"Boys!" Two of them jumped at the call, but the leftmost, the youngest, first lunged for the ground and then, kicking madly, crawled for the nearest tunnel. Submitting to wild terror, he laid cowering. "That's not very nice, I came all this way to see you."

"Please!" The eldest of the three fell to his knees, on trembling hands. "We had nothing to do with it, it was the supervisor and -"

Hidan's quick movement cut him off - the brown-haired brothers and those beside them jerked away, and the eldest, threw himself to the ground with a scream.

But hearing a faint metal thud, the eldest brother couldn't help raising his soot-stained face. Bronze coins laid strewn before him with the half-opened pouches. Hidan's shadow shifted over him, but his eyes were only on the money. "Aritomo's dead," he heard the shinobi mutter, "I took care of him."

"You…you did this for us?" His eyes swivelled up. "This is for us?"

"Nope." There was a screech from the sliding metal pike, but once the miner's gaze found Hidan's shrouded face, contorted by an obscene blend of rage and delight, even the sounds of his brothers screaming seemed distant.

…

"Ha… Renga, Gorou, Umehara, Yurie… even the quiet dude… This is a proper reunion, isn't it?" Hidan hacked out a mouthful of blood while gesturing at the shaggy-looking, uniformed ninja nearest to him.

Shirei only responded with a gloomy look from behind his bangs, the same he had used as a poor replacement for communication since school age, affirming Hidan's vague memory of him. 'The quiet one' retreated to the ranks of his former classmates in the back of the pub, the wailing regulars of which had quickly fled after six dozen shinobi had converged from various stakeout points in the locale to ambush their silver-haired target.

He left Hidan to turn his bitter gaze against the oldest among them: a fairly tall, hook-nosed blonde man who still wore his forehead protector proudly. "A reunion is exactly right," he said, "if you don't mess this up."

Hidan chuckled, touching his lip where the man had struck him when he spotted and countered their assault. He leaned back in the booth and placed his arms over its back: his black cloak, fastened at the collarbone, pulled back to reveal only a white shirt and black vest, a stark contrast to the yellow flak jackets around him. "Punching me in the face isn't exactly the best way to go about this, Kosuke -"

"Sir," his former mentor interrupted sharply. "Kosuke, sir. And I realize that, but with what you've been doing lately, it was the only safe way." His stiff face relaxed into concern. "A nobleman, Hidan? Of the Hot Springs, no less?"

"Guy had it coming -"

"I don't care, you're not some lawless missing-nin. You don't hurt your own."

Hidan knew the precise reason for Kosuke's rising voice. "Been getting some tough commissions lately? Probably been hanging with some real nasty rich folks… probably want to kill them more than I ever did -"

"Shut up!" It was Hidan's old classmate Yurie who suddenly yelled out, cheeks flushed. "We're not thugs!"

"Oh yeah?" Hidan stood and ignored Kosuke's battle-ready pose, homing in on the green-haired girl he remembered as having been just another bland mush of infatuations and petty troubles. "You're telling me you haven't been down in the mines lately?"

He made an involuntary gesture towards the inside of his cloak, and within seconds he was forced to his knees, armlocked by Kosuke with a kunai pressed against his neck. "It's not easy," Kosuke bellowed to silence any arising responses from his former pupils, "but we can't just forget every principle we had -"

"There's no Hidden Hot Springs, _sir_." Hidan spat blood again. "We've been dismissed, disbanded, outsourced. You can worship lords and noblemen all you like, but unless you turn into some cheap Mist chuunin, they're not going to give a damn."

"I'll ask you properly, Hidan. Aritomo Masau's friends and affiliates are after you, but very few are serious about it. Worst case scenario, we'll have to go abroad. But if we do them some favours, you could easily return to their good graces. And ours." He paused, feeling harsh. "I've known you for a long time, Hidan. I know what you're really like -"

Hidan suddenly thrashed, pulling Kosuke forwards – to his horror, the kunai plunged down uncontrollably – and they were enveloped by smoke.

"Dammit! Where is he?" Renga barked somewhere in the white.

"They'll leave you with the scum work, sir." The smoke from the clone settled, and the six alums of the formerly hidden Hot Springs turned to their seventh peer, who stood heaving in the entrance, holding a pike in one hand and his protector in the other. "Because that's exactly what they think you are."

Ignoring their flinches, Hidan raised the pike. "Ninja rule thirty-six: always use disguises during an arrest." He stabbed the protector and carved a line across the three waves. While tying the protector around his neck, he chuckled. "Ninja rule twenty-one: always have someone on the outside. I haven't forgotten a thing, sir…"

...

Sputter, swirl, steam and bubble. What a silly game, Matsusuke thought and leaned his brown backslick against the spring's wooden edge, but he continued anyway, ignoring his naked associates going on about boring affairs. Though he was mostly the same as them – in standing, affluence, personality to an extent and, thanks to hardline fashion trends, appearance – he considered himself the thinker of the group, the introvert with artistic and possibly controversial sensibilities.

It was a curated image - now and then, despite the boredom that ensued, Matsusuke would decide it was a fine time to shy away and become mysteriously quiet (mainly on glowing afternoons like this, or equally radiant moonlit evenings.)

Rather than awkwardly try to re-enter conversation, he occupied himself eavesdropping on nearby strangers, but this was not so fun at the country club, which was nothing if not familiar. Men in neighboring pool areas carried on identical exchanges, escorts tittered in changing rooms, some lad was pleasantly massaged in the distance (or something like it), a valley-child dropped a plate in the backroom of the restaurant. What else? The springs sputtered, swirled, steamed and bubbled.

"Excuse me." Matsusuke opened his eyes. The fellas had fallen silent, all focused on a silver-haired, mopheaded young man at the gate, grinning quite grotesquely. Somehow, Matsusuke hadn't heard him come to their secluded spring. "You fellas knew Aritomo Masau, right?"

"Ah!" Next to Matsusuke, someone splashed out of the water. Surprised, he turned to see one of the partners in their mining business, Okubo, slapping onto the stone steps to the spring. The fellas ignored his panicked squeals and laughed at the sight of his exposed flopping. Blushing fiercely, he yelled back, "you idiots, that's the maniac who killed Masau!"

The sky seemed to drop on the five men in the spring, squeezing the breath out of them - and then, just as Matsusuke snapped out of his lazy respite, they scrambled to escape, some jumping out on the wrong end and crashing onto the grass below, others sliding clean off the steps and crashing into the fence around the area.

The most athletic of the group, Kinmochi, was the first to get up. Unfortunately, he found himself immediately confronted by the pike-wielding Hidan. The shinobi's grin faded just after, and for a brief moment, Kinmochi thought he was imposing to the young man. That was before he noticed –

"What the -" Hidan jumped back into the gate. "You got piss on my shoes!"

"Please don't hurt me!" Kinmochi sobbed and kneeled in the puddle.

"Quiet," Hidan hissed at the whining Okubo, who was cowering behind the spring, "somebody shut him up!" Recomposing himself, he stepped around the puddle with as pleasant a smile as he could muster. "Fellas, I'm not going to kill you, hopefully. If I'm not mistaken, one or two of you currently has men out for my head."

Matsusuke shook his head furiously, the rest of him involuntarily, though to be truthful he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't him. He had been informed of Masau's death at a party, and in what he felt was an admirable display of fury, he had vowed before a roomful of fairer company to exact revenge. The hours thereafter were quite hazy…

"Wh- whoever -" It was Souta, the youngest heir among them: Matsusuke, being the second-youngest, envied him for being the only one brave enough to speak. "Whoever it is will call them off, we promise."

"But then what? My tenure is over, isn't it? I killed one of you fellas, and now word will get around about that mad Ichibei."

"Do you want money? We'll give you -"

"Of course I want money." Hidan lowered his pike, and none of them could acknowledge the rarity of his sincere dourness. "But I need more… I need security." They did, however, recognize wide-eyed desperation. "I need to be one of you."

"One of us?" In spite of his fear and the situation, Matsusuke instinctively spoke the words disdainfully.

Hidan shot him a paralyzing glance, but contained himself. "Respect, money, contacts, all that. Oh, I could turn every club in town into a slaughterhouse. Gather some people and start working abroad, come back on weekends and keep you all in check. But this…" He gestured at the springs. "This'd be easier. Cheaper in the long run."

He wasn't sure if they were empty threats. "Alright…" Matsusuke's second partner, Saigo, sounded quite calm, and Matsusuke realized he didn't feel particularly afraid either: they were in a familiar situation, where they had something someone else wanted. "We'll get you work, shares, a place, all that. But you've got to do something for us." Saigo steadied himself: Matsusuke acknowledged and admired his gambler's spirit. "Just threatening us isn't enough… killing us would make things a lot more difficult for you than letting us live."

"Okay. What do you want?"

…

Down, down, down into the valleys. Hidan would always laugh his way into the valleys and mines to alleviate the irritation of going there. This time he had to repress real laughter, real joy, for it was the last time he would go.

If they don't follow through, he thought, I'll kill them and leave. If they try and backstab me, I'll kill them and leave. Rocks tumbled down the northern hill path, out of the shadows of the cliffs around and into the moonlight over the valley. And if he failed… Absurd. It was just some miner.

Hidden Hot Springs – no, just Hot Springs: Masaki and Canna. Takaya: Tomoyuki, Yutaka and Hashi. Every developed village atop a canyon had one to three mining villages below. He was headed below Maeda - he tried not to concern himself with what villages waited there.

The path evened out. Rocks gave way to dirt and patches of grass. As he walked over the moonlit field, he turned toward the eastern point where the cliff's shadows converged, where the valley narrowed into a canyon. He smelled smoke and headed west.

Lanterns bobbed into sight. He rarely came to the valley villages, but it always struck him how small they seemed. Perhaps they weren't dense, perhaps the houses blended into night, perhaps too many lacked any proper light - or perhaps the villages were simply small.

He stopped where elsewhere there would stand an entrance gate. The field was largely barren. He sat, stretched out his cloak, pulled on his hood, and used the invisibility technique.

Eventually a man, in a rather similar cloak and hood to his, came walking down the dirt street between the houses. He left the village and headed into the field. Hidan followed.

The man didn't go to the mines, but instead farther north. Hidan wondered if the man was meeting someone on this very night. How unfortunate. Whatever talks he had initiated would be ended. Not that it would have changed things. Hidan smiled. The man was outspoken, indignant, a spokesman for the poor, reaching out to the diplomats of the world. Even in death, Aritomo Masau got his way. He was still scheduling inspections.

They reached a river dwarfed by the cliffs, and Hidan followed the man high up on a thin rock path. Hidan wondered where the help was supposed to come from. Mist, doubtful, although freelancers did not uncommonly have a hand in politics there. Rock gained too much from cooperation with the noblemen, and what did the Cloud care about poor miners half a continent away?

No, it was certainly one of the alliance countries, or perhaps an effort by all of them: Grass, Waterfall, Sand, Rain and Leaf. The Leaf, Hidan guessed, the self-styled altruists. But what did it matter to him… After this, it wouldn't matter to him…

Hidan decided this was as good a time as any. He closed in on the man – to his surprise, he was detected, and when their eyes met he stumbled –

He crashed into the man and they fell onto the path. The man, too concerned with keeping from falling into the river, did not truly see Hidan, but Hidan saw the man, saw his lined face and dark eyes, and his thinning silver hair: when Hidan caught himself placing the face, he stood, swaying, and ran –

…

In Takaya, Hidan finds a tiny, blond, barefooted boy wandering the streets alone, marveling at the more glamorous establishments and unperturbed by rejections from shameless concierges. On a whim, he decides to care for the boy. The boy, mistaking him for a resident of the town, happily goes along with it.

At first they wander, and Hidan tries to train the boy, not having any reference for this mixed fatherhood and apprenticeship besides his own experiences. He recalls lessons from his childhood, from men he has forgotten and later Kosuke, and tries to communicate talent as well as a natural like him could. It turns out a fairly hopeless endeavour, as Hidan is a poor teacher and the boy is not physically or temperamentally cut out for becoming a ninja, or so Hidan assumes.

Not having any other means care for the boy, nor any other method to teach him to self-preservation - and, Hidan realizes, he knows no other way for himself - he tries to find the boy other homes.

He makes a few rather foolhardy and presumptuous attempts: first he assumes Kinmochi and Okubo haven't employed several notorious missing-nins for cushy, stable jobs protecting their respective estates. Secondly he assumes Matsusuke and Saigo haven't uprooted to settle in safer, distant environments. Thirdly, he assumes Souta, the only one capable of even a little courage, will be bullied into taking a child.

Lastly, Hidan assumes he will have no trouble fulfilling death threats. He finds that he has become capable of hesitation.

Without any other ideas, Hidan takes the boy and heads east for the Mountain Country, for greener pastures. Just across the border, the boy seems to read his mind and asks to be brought back home. Hidan asks where, and the boy tells him Tomoyuki, in the valleys below Takaya.

Hidan pats the boy on the head and disappears into the forest wordlessly and unremorsefully: but before he does so, he hesitates.

…


	8. VI: Ichibei Hidan, Pt 2

**NOTE: **Longer chapters split in two. Read part one first.

* * *

...

**ICHIBEI** **HIDAN**  
_Invocation, continued  
_

_..._

**7 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

Hidan waited, ignoring both the shouts of his fellow missing-nin out on the street and the fire devouring the old mansion. He stood in the arch of the entrance, on top of the smashed-in, massive doors and servant crushed underneath, and he stared at the beams of the ceiling.

He was waiting for the precise moment when – a dry crunch signaled the breaking point of the wood, and he screamed out exhilarated as the ceiling crashed onto a grand staircase and ripped apart the fallen chandelier and long, red carpet. He spun around and rushed victorious into the night, across the lawn, jumping over potholes torn up by earth jutsu and smashing the heads off short lampposts with an iron bat.

He leapt high over iron fences and landed nimbly on the gravelly road, cheered on by a half-dozen comrades who were already riding off on a horse-drawn wagon. He ran alongside and reached out to be pulled on, and once sat in the back between the bearded, massive Doboku brothers, he could join in their riotous laughter and look out on the passing rocky plains calmly.

They rode along in solitude: the way back into town was littered by destroyed chariots and corpses of soldiers and Stone shinobi who had pursued them. They were dwarfed by a blackness in which any number of retaliations could be underway, but they went on laughing and shouting, shaking the weapons they had taken from ninjas and soldiers, showing off the few spoils they had taken from the mansion, the only one of note in this north-western corner of the Mountain Country.

The blackness was pierced by flames as they approached: half the town was burning. Hidan struggled to remember its name.

His travel companions jumped off the wagon and dashed down the cobblestone streets. Hidan heard a distant wailing, but other than that things seemed oddly quiet but for crackling fire and the crashing of collapsing homes. One of the Doboku brothers patted him on the shoulder as he ran past.

"Don't just stand around, son! It's almost over!" Hidan ran after him, scanning the windows of intact houses, checking every alley where passage had not yet been blocked by wreckage.

"I think it already is. Seems everyone's evacuated."

In the town square, at the centre of which stood a flat rock meant to pass for a monument, they found still-intact buildings. They launched into the air, onto the nearest rooftop.

From that northernmost point, they could see nearly all of the town. The entire west and most of the north side was on fire, and the entire east and south sides were lifeless and dark, although he could hear the roars of the thirty-something fellow bandits who stuck around.

"Seems about right," the Doboku brother said (Hidan could never tell them apart), "though you'd think they'd be better prepared at this point!" Remembering that Hidan was a newcomer to the upstart gang, his wide, brutish face split into a toothy grin. "You're staying, right? Come on… This is the life, Ichibei. It doesn't get any better for wanted men."

Hidan chuckled, but it was hardly a joke and hardly untrue. He looked back a little too late to see that oafish smile again: he caught only a glimpse of metal before the Doboku brother fell into an alley below.

He was quicker after that: he spun to block the second and third well-aimed shuriken with his pike, and he just barely managed to misdirect the incoming Stone-nin's stab with his other hand. But he lost balance, and the two went flying off the rooftop into the building's shade. Fortunately, they landed on the Doboku brother's corpse. Hidan muttered thanks and continued grappling with his assailant.

Him and the Stone-nin both made their final push: the kunai stabbed into the ground by Hidan's head while he shoved the ninja off him and rolled out of the alley. The Stone-nin followed, throwing an easily avoided roundhouse kick – Hidan saw that his opponent, a young man, was frantic and possibly tearing up.

"Oi! Don't they teach you not to cry in school anymore?" Hidan blocked a punch and weaved under a backhand. "Here's one," he gestured around while the Stone-nin stumbled after a missed swing, "ninja rule thirteen: always prepare, before it's too late!"

Their fight hadn't gone unnoticed: several of Hidan's comrades come back around to spread the mayhem cheered from rooftops. Hidan waved back and sidestepped another stab, adding, "don't worry about it, kid! Ninja rule twenty: never show attachment!"

"I know your family!" The scream came out sharp but quickly broke a weak whimper. "I know your family… I'll kill them…"

Above them, missing-nins laughed shrilly. But Hidan fell silent and stared at the young man, barely younger than he was, feeling dumbstruck. Last year came back to him, and something clicked. The Stone, not the Leaf. The Stone.

He grasped the Stone-nin's collar and lifted him to his feet, and then off the ground. The missing-nins cried out and covered their faces in mock horror. Hidan's wide eyes bored into the young man's - the Stone-nin began to speak again, but Hidan's hand pressed over his mouth, a tightening vice, unyielding until it heard a snap.

…

Hidan rode a wagon again. He remembered last time. He shook his head and chuckled. Strange time for reminiscence.

Unfocused, he continued to shake the horse's harness and yell whatever came to mind – curses, warnings to pedestrians, commands to the horse, commands to his one passenger, names, all the names he could think of – nonetheless, he charged on down the streets of Maeda.

Security was better, but still lax. Why hadn't they learned anything? He only needed to throw four kunai and two shuriken, and only once at a ninja. To his disappointment, he didn't need to use any jutsu. What a waste, he thought, since he had learned so many things in the Mountain Country.

Women exiting shops hiked up their dresses and backed up against the storefront. Men walking in packs jumped in fright and waved their canes after they passed. Two guards were mowed down, one deliberately. They charged out of the town lights on the high rise and into shadowed fields – but they stayed off the unmarked paths into the valleys.

Instead Hidan swerved onto the grass and galloped to the cliffs - a few yards to go, he pulled back the harness so hard the horse jumped and caused the wagon to tip over.

Before the horse went running right out into the air, Hidan leaned grabbed the shoulders of his passenger, secured the bag over his head and rope around his wrists, and leapt, carrying both of them to the grass.

Hidan laughed, too, and adrenaline ceased to clog his ears. That's when he heard a voice, and recalled the other five who had been on the wagon.

"What's gotten into you, Hidan?" Amiba, one of the young shinobi he had taken under his wing, staggered on the grass. His voice was hot with excitement. "Kidnapping… kidnapping this guy, I don't even know why…"

Hidan forced a smile, pushing away the bagged passenger. "I saw him on the street and decided to nab him. Same logic we use for everything."

"Yeah, but -" Amiba was too exhilarated to argue. He gave up and fell onto the grass together with Atsuko, one of the two women in the small group.

Chie, the other woman, seemed less enthusiastic. "But why are we stopping here? Hidan, that's a nobleman, they'll come after us -"

"Then I'll kill them." Hidan shrugged at her, smile failing as it struck him how questioning and – his nose twitched irritably – how plain she was.

Atsuko nodded, though besides Amiba, no one was looking. "What could they do to us?" she panted.

"But -"

"Where are you from, Chie?" Hidan watched the other two boys in the group, Isami and Muno, antagonize the kneeling nobleman, slapping his bagged head and hissing rhetorical questions. After a long pause, the somewhat startled, mousy girl answered.

"Takaya."

"Amiba?"

"Huh? Oh, Takaya. Them too." He pointed at Atsuko and the boys, but Hidan had eyes only for the nobleman.

"We don't get any commissions anyways." Hidan didn't care much, so he drew on things he had said before. "I'll look after you. That's why you joined me, right?" Without waiting for an answer, he stepped over to the nobleman. Isami and Muno backed away as he ripped off the bag. "Sorry about that, fella! Better?"

The balding, pale nobleman yelled through his gag and stained his brown dress coat crawling on the grass in panic. Hidan pulled him up by the elbow while the boys danced about. "Easy, fella," Hidan muttered, "don't lose your balance."

Pulling the nobleman along, Hidan followed the horse's tracks to the cliff's edge. Isami and Muno stopped dancing. "Hidan…" Amiba was ignored. Hidan looked down the chasm; though wide enough to soak up some moon, the wagon's wreckage had fallen to pits untouched by light.

Hidan pulled off the nobleman's gag and flinched when spittle fell out. "Who are you?" The nobleman yelled and tried to catch a glimpse of the others, but Hidan yanked him to face the abyss. "Why are you doing this? Why me?"

"No reason." Hidan shrugged, looking out over the valley. "Felt like it." He winked at the nobleman. "Why not?"

The nobleman saw the split protector around his neck. "Please… You have a duty… You can't do this…"

"Mm, well, that's true, but my duty is protecting guys like you, and that just doesn't sit well with me."

"If you do this, y-you're every bit as bad -" Hidan grunted and he fell silent. A small whimper escaped the nobleman as the young man craned his neck at him.

Hidan whispered something, but the one who stood nearest, Isami, only caught the word "worse." If anything else was said, it was not heard over Atsuko's shriek as Hidan suddenly moved – and then came relieved laughter, as he had only wrenched the nobleman toward them, bald head pinched under his arm.

They went on laughing several seconds after Hidan stepped back and the two dropped out of sight, to the valleys below –

…

Hidan came to the village a bleeding, broken mess and found his base cry unheard, his invocation of blood bonds unanswered - the rejection became a spell of its own, delivering the village below Maeda into Hidan's red maw.

He tore down the streets, what little could be discerned in the valley turned into grey and black blurs. Lanterns bobbed into sight, and Hidan ran to these beacons swinging at whatever may have stood underneath.

A pale hand fly out at him in wide, untrained arc: he slashed his pike and felt an unimpressive impact. Unsatisfied, he stabbed blindly until he felt a breakthrough and warmth on his hand, and then charged on to the next lantern.

But the lights flickered off, so he stumbled onto the dirt road that cleaved the village in half, roaring and flailing madly to catch anyone who happened to run past.

Someone bumped into his waist: he swiped low, struck a head, and felt them fall.

He couldn't see the child, nor could the child see his deranged, twisted face, both of them trapped in unceasing night. He stood there, panting, pike raised over his prey. The child's whimper penetrated his clogged ears.

Hidan recognized the voice. He hesitated.

…

Morning came. Hidan woke on his back in the forest. He was not alone. "He's up. What do we do?" A young voice, insecure. That was all Hidan could tell. He watched the sky through the trees and his own matted bangs.

"Sure you don't recognize him?" Gruffer, older.

"Why should I? He's from the Valley."

"He's a missing-nin."

"You don't know that. I'm telling you, that cutting thing doesn't always mean -"

"Okay." How long had he been there? "Hey, kid. You're from the Valley, right?"

Another voice. "Yes. But I wasn't a ninja there…" Hidan blinked.

"Check anyways. It's a small world."

"Really? You're going to let the rookie check?"

"The guy's bleeding to death, what's he going to do?"

A tiny, pale finger brushed aside Hidan's hair. A boy with a Stone protector. The sunlight filled his hair with a glow. He went away.

"Don't know him. Leave him."

"You serious, kid? Damn… Some rookie…"

Hidan began to fade out. It had been difficult to tell in the sunlight, but he wondered if the boy was…

…

… silver-haired.

Hidan watched the stone bricks above. He was tucked into a bed and felt not at all compelled to move. To his left, he heard running water and someone replacing dishes. This did not interest him much, so he closed his eyes and went back to sleep. He woke again after an hour and sat up.

He was in small living quarters, a compact area serving as kitchen, living room and bedroom, cheap wooden furniture and a few books scattered about. The sun shone in through a gap in the stone wall: Hidan recognized it as the base of a minor outpost tower, though he wasn't certain, having been at a similar place only once as a genin.

Another man was there, presumably the same he heard earlier. At the kitchen table sat a tanned, grey-haired man in a brown flak jacket and green cloak, reading a black book. Out of the corner of his eye, Hidan could tell the man was fairly old, but not much more: he refrained from stretching the stitches in his neck and torso. He couldn't see he was being watched. He tried to touch his bangs, but they were gone.

"Your hair got in the way. Hope you like it short." Hidan stared at the sheets over his bare legs while the man approached and sat next to the bed. "I've been following you, Hidan. You killed one of my contacts." Hidan didn't ask, but the man answered. "I'm from the Rock. I was in talks with some Stone-nin about the situation in the Ishikawa mines."

"Ishikawa. Where's that?"

"Below Maeda. I followed you from the remnants of Otsuki Town in the Mountain, to the Hot Springs, to Takaya, to Maeda, to the forest outside. I've heard all about your crimes. Just last night, I saw what you did to Ishikawa."

"You're arresting me, then?"

"No." The chair screeched as it slid closer, and the man's knees came into Hidan's sight. "Why did you stop, Hidan?"

"I don't follow."

"You slaughtered nearly half the villagers, and then you stopped. Why?"

"Why not? No point." Hidan felt unprepared to think about two nights ago, yet the first and easiest answer he thought of seemed true. "Doesn't change a thing."

The chair screeched again and the knees disappeared. "Fair enough." Satoshi – Naraka Path – left Hidan to wonder not why he had stopped, but why he had begun.

…

Hidan went back to sleep, and didn't wake until the next morning. Satoshi was there, and when Hidan got out of bed, he was given black, ill-fitting clothes and a bag and was offered breakfast. Hidan declined. Satoshi gave him his parting words, "see you," and Hidan wordlessly left the small tower in the grassy clearing.

After a long, sunny walk through the forest, he regretted not staying to eat and checked his bag for some food. There was nothing inside but several white sheets wrapped around a lone, black book. It had no title: on its front was a circle, and on its back was a triangle.

With nothing better to do, Hidan read.

…

**12 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"O lord Jashin, forgive me should my patience break." It would, under any other circumstances, but the comfort of a hot spring eased his irritation with the guards, who apparently hadn't heard the commotion at all. "I've not broken fast," it was the holiday of austerity, "though I confess to exploitation of the book." Specifically, for a week any soil touched by the Jashinist were to go bloodless: Hidan kept the bodies inside the spring, careful not to splash any bloodstained droplets.

"Though, honestly, O lord Jashin..." A breeze to cool his head was enough to break his content. "If these ****ers really haven't noticed a thing yet, don't you think they deserve to die? Urgently?" A shout from outside - a valley servant passing a window in the clubhouse had peeked where they shouldn't peek, and now came the cavalry. Hidan chuckled. "O lord, you test me."

Hidan stood as slowly as he could so as not to startle the springwater - meanwhile, the gates swung open and a dozen guards streamed inside, armed with spears and lead by a protector-less shinobi.

The shinobi raised a trembling kunai - another inexperienced freelancer, probably a missing-nin. "You're under arrest! Surrender or we'll have to kill you!" Hidan smiled and moved to step out of the spring - "Goddammit! Put on some clothes first!"

Hidan frowned. Whether he meant it or not, the shinobi could only refer to one god, the only god. Still in the water, he reached behind the spring to fetch and put on his shirt and pants - lastly, he picked up his black-and-red cloak and fanned it out. Whether he meant to or not, he wafted a trickle of pink foam out of the spring - onto the grass.

"Oh dear. Oh my." Hidan sighed at the guards and turned to the sky with a plaintive smile. "O lord Jashin. I've misstepped. Please, hear my prayer." He closed his hands: a chain was looped around his wrist, the other end hooked to a black staff on the ground, tipped with red blades that came again, again and again. "I ask penance: let me offer you compensation."

…


	9. VII: Hoshigaki Kisame

The shark may feed, the shark must move.

**NOTE: **Major AU changes. The Second Mizukage is alive during Kisame's time in the Mist. Terumi Mei is his daughter.

* * *

...

**HOSHIGAKI** **KISAME**  
_Dogs at Sea Are Known as Sharks_

...

**3 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

It was a mistake to challenge this man on his own turf. A second's distraction and the knee-high pool would seize one's legs, and though it should've been him struggling for footing, his comical size became indefinable in the enveloping dark of the cave, an optical illusion of impossibly wide shadows.

Worse yet, however meaty his limbs were, their blue tone made them indiscernible against the waters.

The challenger had shown little forethought, forgivably not out of arrogance. Pale arms uncovered and holsters unburdened for fleeter movement, he was thin, frail and hopelessly visible: a lit match in a damp, broad hand.

If there was any silver lining, thought the young challenger as he spotted something flittering overhead, it was that his opponent's weapon stood out as much as his own skin and glinting katana. Wound tightly with gray bandages, it was jarringly a welcome sight.

He smiled as it came down on him for the last time.

Afterwards, after the blows had been dealt and the jittery waters had been placated, Kisame raised the Samehada from the shallow waters. He admired it for a moment, stains and all, before returning his attention to the prey.

He raised one foot and planted it firmly on the hilt of his katana, driving it further into Suikazan's great belly. Now he could see the newly replaced Swordsman clearly, contrasted against the water, blood running down his blue cheeks, slotting into the gills scarring his neck.

Kisame considered asking if they worked, but the man had already passed. Pleased nonetheless, he left the body. It seemed redundant to move it from the place it had chosen.

...

**5 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

...

"Looks like the sea is rising." The Mizukage peered out through carefully parted curtains. Kisame knew what he meant: the mist hung far too low, and so thickly it was indistinguishable from the village's channels in the faint glow of beryl-encased streetlights.

It was a non-sequitur, but Kisame was in no hurry. Content to witness the Second's thought process, he brushed back his long, brown hair and slouched in the office's one guest chair, watching the gangly, vaguely hunching Kage warily lean toward the translucent window.

He had forgotten Kisame was in the room at all. "Shame to see them go, of course…" Yes, thought his subordinate jounin, damn shame. "But you pay what you owe…"

This remark stung Kisame. Suddenly not content in the least, he cleared his throat loudly. As expected, the Second spun around so quickly his compact pompadour threatened to unravel. "Hoshigaki!"

"Yes, sir?"

He all but collapsed into his sturdy chair, arms thudding down on the desk between them and fanning out. Head bowed, the exposed whites of his sharp gaze told of desperation. "Figure out who they are and take care of them."

"All of them, sir?"

"The four strongest, per your judgment. No, three. Four, that'd be… wasteful."

"What about the bloodliners? They could still be working together."

The Second threw himself back into the chair, smacking his tongue and waving dismissively, spasmodically. "The savages have already assumed they've the liberty to rebel. They'll be dealt with nonetheless."

Muttering impatiently, he drifted away: perhaps it was the absence of that hostile stare that allowed Kisame to overstep. "They're my comrades. My fellow Mist-nin."

That wasn't it: the stare locked in again and Kisame felt nothing. "They were my comrades too, Hoshigaki. Mine." His hands convulsed, clawing at the desk. "A mercenary group. I could've taken to the idea, Hoshigaki. But they chose to help our enemies, the very insurgents we host, and take money from them, and put it in their own pockets while the nation is wanting. Unacceptable –"

Kisame felt a pang of snickering pity. He could've reached out and stroked the poor child's cheek, embraced him like a mother who knew this turmoil would one day seem petty. He was not witnessing rage or indignation or even paranoia, but rather humiliation and confusion on the receiving end of betrayal.

...

Matabei insisted on leaving the sliding wall slightly opened. Gentaro opted to skulk in the dark reaches of the emptied storage hut, watching his stouter partner monitor the entrance and accompanying moonlight with enviable leisure. Puffs of mist slipped in occasionally, pushed by the breeze, each one drawing his eyes flinchingly.

A whisper from outside. Matabei's flippant response annoyed Gentaro: a knock on the wall to confirm. He readied a kunai as the wall inched open.

"Might as well relax, Gento," said Tsuu, his chuckle muddled by the patter of his crossing onto matted floors. "The wall's nearly see-through up close." He poked a hole in the wafer-thin sliding wall.

Matabei raised a hand to quell any response. Tsuu followed him to the chairs and closets in the back of the hut (only Gentaro thought to slide the wall shut.) Tsuu took a chair as well, but Matabei gestured no, pointing him to one corner and Gentaro to another.

"I want some distance between us." He plopped down while the other two obeyed. "Coming here is already giving you the benefit of the doubt."

"What does that mean?" Gentaro searched their faces. "What does he mean?"

"Relax, Gento, think. We're three of the strongest in the whole group. Take us out and the rest get the message." He smiled at the response in Matabei's perpetually deadpan expression: 'how reassuring.' "Point is, why'd they go after Kijima, then? Some kid who barely broke his flak jacket in? Clearly, the Mizukage doesn't know our roster."

Matabei nodded. "We didn't get sold out."

"Exactly. Infiltrated, maybe, but they haven't gotten far in. Everyone will split up for a while and keep a low profile, and in a year it'll be fine."

Off in his corner, Gentaro stopped pressing his back to the wall, easing his hold on the kunai. "What about the clients? They could tell."

"That's the beauty of it, right? Rebels, bloodliners! We just have to kill them before they get the chance. Get on the Kage's good side while we're at it."

For once, Matabei and Tsuu were the ones startled: Gentaro released a strange, breathy groan and slumped to the floor, dropping the kunai. And that was it: the stiff triangle they had formed was broken, Matabei wearily rising from his seat while Tsuu crossed the room to his relieved friend.

He helped Gentaro to his feet, humming understandingly to tumbling confessions of worry, both drowned out by the clatter of Matabei replacing the chair. Tsuu's explosive laughter drowned out Gentaro's blathering. "Did you really suspect us? Come on, you invited me here."

Neither could see their older teammate freeze. "It was Matabei's idea, he convinced me…" Nor his bewildered face, not that they would've recognized it.

"Really?" Halfway to the sliding wall, Tsuu stopped in the dimmed moonlight and turned to the darkest corner. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I didn't call the meeting, Tsuu." Matabei's voice was harsh, and stepping forward his rare confusion disappeared. It would never be seen again. "You told me about it."

Some doubt must have remained: consciously or not, perhaps out of a lingering sense of loyalty, he allowed them a moment to realize there was an impostor. Gentaro dove for the kunai.

Later, the impostor left the hut alone.

But first before he left, Kisame did something he had declined to for two years: he unwound the Samehada's wraps. Before, when it served him so well, it felt greedy to pry. Disrespectful, he would think, mocking himself for an addendum that seemed absurd. No longer: that night, hearing its call to unburden its edge, he learned the Samehada was no object.

Out of fear or reverence, he made sure the jumble of bandages concealed wherever he pointed the weapon: whatever allowed it to clear all traces of blood in the hut remained a mystery, the only clues two dried out, flaking corpses.

Kisame cast them out to sea, same as the first one and Kijima. It occurred to him they had been reliable, too, within his little mercenary group. Bad place for loyalties, he thought, bittering his eulogy: "wasteful, indeed."

…

His hand lingered, rolling the bill off her slender fingers. Strangely, she did not hurry to retract, continuing to reach as the tip of his index brushed off hers. For a second, the poor oarsman deluded himself she was inviting him: then he lifted his lurid gaze and saw in Mei's stony eyes apathy, dismissal, disaffection. The sentiment was clear: 'do it at your own peril.'

She hopped off the gondola, raised her hood to the rain and darted down the street. She made sure the gondola continued drifting up the channel, until the curving road obscured it behind flats and shops. Then, she turned down the first alleyway until she found herself at a cramped crossroads, the backdoor nexus of four buildings, barely roofed with a gazebo ceiling connecting the houses via tarp-covered, crisscrossing beams. She removed her hood and waited, watching the other three alleyways, particularly the gated one to the street.

The gate snapped open. Kisame entered. Dripping, his long hair clung to his brow and cheeks. Night cast heavy shades from his contours. He appeared gaunt, unsmiling. "Mei."

Her attention continued to drift from alley to alley, glossing over him. "I see you. Stay there." She moved to the corner to his alley, into the shadow of the tall, metal gate. "Kijima? A child? Was that necessary?"

"It helped." She didn't stop him from inching closer: now his lips, not grim, were visible. "I told him when he joined, from now on you're looking over your shoulder."

She could barely hear him over the rain striking the tarp overhead. He moved. "Stay there. I trust you followed through, then." He frowned. "No, I don't blame you. It's father's fault… How is he?"

"He's feeling the pressure."

"Good. Good, he deserves it." She winced, certain something passed in the next alley. He smiled again, and she strained herself not to visibly sour: she hated him briefly, for his mockery and his complacency hiding it. "We can't rest yet. He'll put his all into hunting rebel clans."

Kisame started forwards, hands out pleadingly. "The whole point of this was to go under the radar! We have to give it more time –"

"Stay there." She noticed his face, now visible from the nose down: pink had spread into his pale cheeks, raw rather than blushing, and his nose was thicker, as if it had swollen without losing its shape. "Was it a rough fight?"

He was genuinely confused – again she felt inexplicably angry that he wouldn't pretend otherwise. "They couldn't lay a finger on me. Why?"

Mei entered Kisame's shadow. Immersed in it, she could see him clearly. Despite the darkness he squinted terribly, reducing his eyes to small black marbles. She put a finger to his brow and ran it down his nose ridge. "I'm sleeping under the same roof as the guy. Staying under the radar is not on the cards."

He didn't return her smile. She held it through another stab of rage, this time certain his impassiveness concealed mirthless judgment: 'you plot, but I act.' She whispered, "my goal is protecting bloodliners. My kind. I hope it's yours, too, Kisame."

Slowly, he relieved the strain on his eyelids. His hand snuck to the back of her waist. He nearly pulled Mei off her feet to kiss her. Once lowered to the earth, she tasted her lips, unsure what left the oily texture.

He licked his lips, too, but exaggeratedly, giving her a show. "Hey," he growled lightly, "it didn't burn."

…

Kisame crouched to the underside of the ship's bow, watching the last of the soldiers enter the harbor's docking area, scrambling for an escape in the maze of loading containers. They fell haplessly to even the smallest number of shinobi – Kisame wondered about the threat of the bloodliners already rounded up.

Still, in broad daylight it was best to be cautious. He waited until they were out of sight and launched into the sea, shot through the undercurrent slashing the dock's supporting beams and resurfaced on its other side (unaware he didn't take a breath.) Underwater, he had heard muted death cries. Now, the planks barely shuddered above, and the light cutting through merely flickered to his left. There was only one of them left.

He sidled up to a beam and slowly ascended. Ahead, a bit of blue, partial armor disappeared behind a container just off the dock. Quickly he was at the container's corner, glancing down the aisle the soldier was headed. Farther down the dock, two fellow mercenaries crept toward him, wide-eyed with anticipation. Winking, he signaled for them to back off.

The soldier caught a glimpse of his katana, appearing from smoke and air, before it slashed his neck in half, vanishing before he hit the ground.

Kisame missed none of it, grinning as he took in the end of his assignment. He relished the moment too long: he spotted the unfamiliar, red-haired shinobi suddenly appeared at the end of the aisle, but in the time he recognized the Mist protector around her neck, she found time to escape.

…

If it weren't a temporary residence, he might have been less suspicious of a supposed visitor. Hadn't he a week ago killed a beloved jounin of the Mist for the position of Seven Swordsman, he certainly wouldn't be suspicious of a mere knock on his door. And if he wasn't housing an enemy of the state, Zabuza wouldn't be poised at the end of the entrance hallway, newly attained greatsword in hand, shouting orders at the door.

It clicked open weakly. A hand slipped in – it was beyond pale, Zabuza noted, graying. It returned and obeyed his command: his visitor's weapon slowly entered, stretching nearly the entire hallway as it laid to the floor, practically a new bandaged carpet.

The door swung aside for a short-haired giant, his hands up in surrender. Zabuza knew by the sword this was Hoshigaki Kisame, head jounin and right hand of the Second Mizukage, but the man before him didn't suit the reputation. Ashen-faced and smiling politely, he looked like a sleep-deprived servant running one last errand.

Zabuza lowered his sword and stepped out of cover. "Sorry about that."

Kisame gestured at the Samehada, though he didn't move to get it. "I understand. Momochi Zabuza... I should congratulate you, but I was on good terms with Houzuki."

"No hard feelings, I hope."

"Watch out for his son Mangetsu. He's not as self-possessed as he likes to appear."

With a brush of his heel, Kisame closed the door. He appeared content to stay there, arms raised: daylight shut out, his beady stare became smaller in the dark, unnerving Zabuza. "What do you want?"

"Your strength, Zabuza. I need you to fight for me against the Mizukage."

Zabuza nodded as if it were obvious, confused by his elder's smirk. He eventually registered the key word. "Against him?"

"I'm the head of a mercenary group taking commissions from bloodline clans. But that well is about to be tapped, so we've decided to kill him. And you get the honors."

Against his will, Zabuza's grip on the greatsword trembled. "… How can you tell me this?"

Before it was retrieved from a back pocket, Zabuza knew, he knew what it was, he knew somebody had been watching, he knew they shouldn't have gone back to that snowy village, he shouldn't have listened, he shouldn't have been sentimental –

Kisame dropped the photo on the floor, onto his sword. "Small apartment." He looked left, then right, leaning a bit to see out the hallway. "Is she in the bathroom or the bedroom?"

Zabuza refused to raise his eyes from the photo. "He. He's a boy."

Kisame didn't answer, but Zabuza could hear the response, "fooled me", and could feel the man's open grin turning into a taunting leer. Composing himself, Zabuza forced his gaze to the man's feet, horribly gray, too, with webbed toes and yellowing nails, slowly up his legs and chest, and –

There was no glee in his features. Skin taut over sharp cheekbones, nostrils flaring and eyebrows furrowed, sunken glare unwavering – it was exaggerated, absurd, and would had made Zabuza laugh if it wasn't intentional, if there were words for the threat it portrayed.

It had been six days since Zabuza had struck down his fellow Mist-nin and pried the weapon from his dead grip. Whatever monster had given him that strength, he now saw its face.

…

"Hoshigaki, you don't look well."

The Second, far away in the haze, was a weightless shape on the throne. Kisame couldn't tell where the indigo mist flowed forth from to brush heavily against his clammy cheeks, gather against the gazebo ceiling and cloud the mansion's inner court. The location was too exposed for his liking, but deep in the shroud was the Kage's place of comfort.

Kisame grasped the hilt on his back and rustled the Samehada, unsure the Second or his daughter, vaguely discernible at the throne's side, could tell. "Trust me, I'm fine." The shadows of guards floated about in the court.

"If you say so. You know of the assassination attempt."

"Of course."

"It's not surprising. I had heard of Momochi, he was clearly unstable."

"He's unstable? Was that the reason?"

"Maybe he was paid, maybe he wanted the throne – doesn't matter. What matters is that he gathered a sizeable group of followers. That's what concerns me."

"I'll take care of them."

"Please don't. I overreacted before. I now see the faction rising against me is fractured – some have betrayed me, others are simply opportunists. They can be won back."

"Sir, is this an apology?"

The Second chuckled. "Do you think I owe one, Hoshigaki?" Kisame laughed half-heartedly, too, eyes drifting for a second to Mei's reticent figure. "No, this is a resignation. I'm leaving."

The air beside the Second shifted: a double-take from Mei, Kisame assumed. "Father?"

"I'll return within the year, should my critics' loyalty outlast their dissent. My daughter will be Kage in the meantime, and you, Hoshigaki, will take my place pursuing the bloodline clans."

Kisame felt her peering through the mist. "Of course. I'll take care of them." The Second hummed agreeably: the mist was fading and Kisame could see him rising from the throne. "Sir, may I ask – how did the assassination fail?"

"I'm quite a good fighter, Hoshigaki." He failed to recognize the Second's joke. "I kid – I was tipped off." The mist was fading rapidly now: Kisame left before their faces cleared.

…

Kisame wrested his arm from her and set off again. Mei hesitated to pursue him into the uncovered part of the bridge, where the arcing beams interlaced overhead grew farther apart until they stopped, revealing the sprawling village laid out below, shimmering in sunlight filtered through vapors.

"Please—"

"Calm down." He spun around suddenly – she tensely half-stepped back into the x-shaped shadows. "You made the right call, anything else would've been suspicious. The squad will reach the clan's settlement in an hour – I'll make it there in half an hour."

"And you'll—"

"And I'll make sure they get out of there, and if they're not quick about it, I'll take care of the hunter-nin."

"Alone?"

Kisame sighed: the red-haired shinobi from the docks still haunted him. "If I hadn't been spotted, the Second wouldn't have expected someone from the inside. I could've gone myself, instead of Zabuza... at least then, we wouldn't be in this position now." He half-turned, then faced her again. "We can't let him play us against each other, Mei. You wanted to protect your kind, and now you've ordered them dead- you had to," he added, before she could interrupt. "But I won't let him play you against yourself."

She was quiet. Kisame took it to mean she was satisfied, so he left. He wasn't wrong: it had been long since she saw his face in daylight, and though stunned by its flaking, gray skin, bony brow and shallow cheeks, she was most struck by its sincerity.

…

"Damn," Kushimaru's reedy voice echoed behind his mask, "did we catch you at a bad time?"

Kisame sat on a stump at the end of the clearing, beneath looming trees, looking up at the rock wall ahead, where the four Swordsmen stood stark black against the moonlight. He was soaked in blood, a fine white dust caked on his arms and flecked across his face, forming hard, jagged squares. White husks laid smashed at his feet.

"What did you do with their heads?" On the far-right of the row, Mangetsu pointed his hooked sword, Angler, at the caved-in, chalk-like corpses. The lantern hanging from its hilt sent warm light flowing over the decapitated torsos: they wilted at its touch, emptied of any supporting structure.

Jinpachi twirled his flounder-shaped blade by the hilt, glaring at the crumbling bodies. "What are we waiting for?"

He was held back by Jinin's calming hand. "Kisame… What happened here?"

Kisame stood – all four jolted into battle stances, swords readied, but stopped to watch him continue to stand, cumbersomely, aching, the hard dust trembling like armor pieces and breaking off. He stumbled into the lantern's light, and they saw the spots where the dust had shed after sucking up the blood beneath. His skin was covered in bumpy blue rashes steadily encroaching on blackened, boiling flesh, and the borders where the two met burned red as if the acid in his wounds rejected soothing waves of water. "Where are the hunter-nin?" He asked.

…

Mei drifted out of her sleep with carefree softness. The balcony door was open, indigo curtains fluttering and pale moonlight flooding her floors. She had left the door closed.

Something round thudded heavily onto the sheets beside her. She was not surprised: her eyes glossed over the red-haired head and locked onto the one who tossed it, leaning against the wall in the shadow of her bookcase. She didn't immediately recognize Kisame: like all carriers of the Samehada eventually do, he had succumbed to its plague and submerged himself in fresh blue scales.

"My only question is," he said, and she smiled at his attempt at a playful tone, "was she your cousin or your sister?"

"I can think of better questions than that. For example, why did you kill Kijima? Why did you let a witness get away?" She sat up and raised her voice – Kisame had never heard her so livid. "Why didn't you protest to taking charge of the purge?"

"You seem to have some ideas."

"Same reason you warned my father about Momochi. Because none of it would hurt you as long as you stayed in his graces."

"You're insane. I followed you."

She resettled against her pillow. "I'm the Kage now, Kisame. Your mercenaries follow me. Your fellow swordsmen follow me. My kind follow me and the ones who hunt my kind follow me. I don't need you following me anymore."

"Oh, but if you had let me, I would've never complained." Smoke rose from a tag on her sister's severed head: she failed to capture him in the explosion, busy as she was encasing herself in protective water.

…

**6 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**

…

"No."

"You heard them, the war is over. We could easily move in and out of the country."

"For a visit? It's not worth the risk."

Haku sighed, putting his arms at his sides and turning away. Zabuza supposed that meant they were taking a break in their hike up the hills. He joined his protégé in looking out over the fields, waiting to spot whatever their minds dwelled on. Haku sighed. "We'd need all the bad luck there is to get caught."

"Don't trust luck, trust reason. They wanted you dead until yesterday. That's a good reason to expect bad luck."

…

The bloody hand, rendered slimy by water, stuck to the inside of the box. Mei didn't bother to pry it out: she already recognized the opalescent ring on its middle finger as that of a lord. She read the accompanying note.

_'To the Third Mizukage  
_

_Glad to hear your talks with the Volcano Country went well.  
If news of your alliance arrived before this package, you should enjoy at least a day of credibility added to your power.  
I spared the guards._

_Sharkskin'_

…

The Second Mizukage's laugh was darker than he expected. The Terumi elder had always seemed foppish and weasel-like to Kisame. A shrill squawk would go better with that face. Especially now that he gave off an air of desperation, his eyes dark and baggy and gray strands poking out of his pompadour. He tapped the bar counter and another two cups were set in front of the Second, who immediately downed both.

"It really is! It really is," he paused, covering his mouth in case his burp escalated, "a secret passageway. You just stick your foot in it and flush twice and then you're outside the village!"

"That's helpful, but not the help I was asking for. I want you to join us."

"What, another mercenary group?"

"You were open to it."

"Mm." He waved to the bartender, who ignored him and shrugged at Kisame. Kisame tapped the counter again and Hiroyuki - Animal Path - slid over another two cups. "How come you warned me, Hoshigaki?"

Kisame waited for the sour-faced Second to recover from the third drink. "You thought Zabuza was the ringleader, didn't you?"

"I did."

"There you go." He interrupted before the Second asked. "I kept you alive, your daughter safe and myself unsuspected."

"Fair enough," the Second said and handed the fourth cup to Kisame. "But you didn't need to kill Kijima."

The Second jumped as Kisame slammed down his cup and rose, gasping with satisfaction from the drink. The blue giant stared at the bottles behind the bar while the first silence formed since they arrived in the empty tavern. Then, he retrieved a black-and-red cloak from inside the one he wore and placed it in front of the former Mizukage.

"Kijima was the only one I told never to trust me."

…


	10. VIII: Uchiha Itachi

The hands guide, the tongue guides, the ears guide, the nose guides - all guide where the eyes fail.

* * *

…

**UCHIHA ITACHI  
**_Severance_

…

**8 Years After the Kyuubi Attack  
**…

'… _closest friend. This is the only way for an Uchiha-by-blood to gain their full birthright._

_This barbaric ritual would be inexcusable to any but the clan Uchiha, the last to threaten the peace of the new world. Where others planted their banners in the newly founded villages, they campaigned throughout the nations, paid by foregone warlords. Their stubbornness was fruitless, and in the end only the most bloodthirsty of the Uchiha, chief Madara, refused to join the village of their homeland, the Hidden Leaf. Nevertheless, it is well known that the clan entered the village with bitter resignation and would sooner see the world embroiled in the old flames of war.'_

Fugaku held his torch closer to the hidden tablet of the Naka Shrine. His son kneeled beside it. He was inspecting the symbol beneath the inscription.

A horizontal line bisected by a shorter, vertical line, each half encircled by crescent blades. Senju.

"Why are you showing me this?" Itachi asked.

Fugaku recognized the knowing hesitation in his genius son's voice and nodded solemnly. "So you'll know what they think of us."

…

"So he complained to the Hokage and – …Oh, sorry. I haven't even asked about your mission."

"I can't tell you about it anyway. Go on."

"Come on… Really? Fine. Well, the Hokage listened, because this guy _really_ hates bugs. They put an Inuzuka on our team instead, so now I have to look out for their weirdo techniques."

"I'm sure it won't be any trouble if you stay on guard."

Shisui was genuinely offended. "I'm not staying on guard for dog piss!"

They stopped on top of the First Hokage's stone head. Across the waterfall stood the likeness of their ancestor, hand raised in a peaceful farewell. "I'm surprised you made it, though," Shisui said. "I thought it was an A-rank mission."

Itachi pulled his ANBU mask out of his empty holster. "It was."

"… But it was this morning."

"Mhm. I made it quick." Itachi paused, concerned gaze travelling down the waterfall. "Still missed Sasuke's graduation."

Shisui saw his younger cousin headed into a thinking mood and grabbed the ANBU mask. "What happened to staying on guard?"

Itachi didn't appear to notice his cousin's surprise at being able to take the mask, smiling and imitating Shisui's light shuffling before lashing out to retrieve the mask. "Thanks, I learned my lesson. You wanted to show me something."

"Well… It's kinda stupid." He turned back to the distant statue. "I heard a rumor. Did you know there's a secret room below the Naka Shrine?"

"I hadn't heard."

"There's a tablet there that describes the clan's secret. Supposedly, there's a treasure hidden near the statue of Uchiha Madara." Shisui grinned, ignoring Itachi's obvious skepticism. "Well? Wanna see if the tablet's wrong?"

Itachi looked up, spying something Shisui hadn't noticed. A brown bird descended to Itachi's shoulder. Once the note was untied from its leg, it flew away. "Special delivery." Itachi put the note away, smirking. "Of course, it's safe to assume you've seen the tablet yourself."

"An emergency carrier?" Shisui asked.

"It's fine. I want to see this treasure."

"You have to go, Itachi."

"… Shisui, you're the one who said to come out here." Shisui crossed his arms: he wasn't budging, despite what he imagined was a tinge of hurt in his cousin's voice. "I wanted to come out here."

"Duty calls."

"Not yours."

"Yours is more important." If he was annoyed, Itachi didn't show it. It had been better if he did. "I'm just worried. It took us six hours to get here, what if they need you?"

The hollows beneath Itachi's eyes deepened when he glared, however slightly. "I could get back in an hour alone."

Shisui nodded to himself, looked away, did everything to rein himself in. "Good. Then I'll stay behind."

…

"You were almost late," Danzou grumbled from the far left council seat. Sarutobi wasn't bothered by Itachi's insolent response of continuing to watch the Hokage impassively, since the young prodigy had always shown him proper respect. Not to mention he himself found it an effort to show Danzou respect.

"Your squadmates say you set off and finished the mission without them," Sarutobi said. "I always appreciate efficiency, but there is equal merit in following protocol."

"Protocol says to be efficient, sir."

"How clever you are –" Before elder Koharu could turn her compliment into something decidedly different, Sarutobi placed his Kage's hat on the table before him to draw their attention.

"Your reports on the recent Uchiha meetings have already aided us in keeping the peace," he said, trying to convey the gratitude his three old peers apparently lacked, "but we hear you missed the latest gathering." Anyone else would have asked how they knew: he had never heard Itachi ask anything. "You know how vital the information you're providing is. Only you can provide it. What kept you?"

Itachi turned his face down. Of the three council members seated below than the Hokage, Homura sat the lowest: he would later tell Sarutobi he glimpsed the boy smiling. Itachi revealed a small scroll and summoned its contents – Sarutobi was the only one not to half-stand as if expecting an attack.

A stone slab crashed to the floor. "I didn't have time for both my mission and the meeting. You wanted the tablet. Here's a copy. The inscription will tell you the location of each Uchiha stronghold, supply base and safehouse."

Danzou snorted. "You think we aren't aware of them? They're relics from before the First's time. We've known them for centuries, we've _used_ them for centuries."

Itachi turned a dull eye to the old man. "And now you'll know about the ones we've been using."

…

The birds mean many things.

White means report to the Hokage's office. (Seasonally, white means nominations for the Chuunin Exams are due.)

Yellow means turn on radio equipment for direct communication. (If undertaking an escort mission, yellow means abort mission.)

Blue means the hospital is requesting assistance from off-duty shinobi with medical experience. (If the Hokage is hospitalized, blue means the Hokage has passed.)

Red means report to the north, east, south or west gates. (During crisis, red means initiate emergency protocols.)

Black means a hostile element is active in the village. (During known threat of assassination, black means the attempt is underway or has succeeded.)

All shinobi notice the birds they were supposed to. The most attentive notice birds not intended for them. Only members of the Hyuuga tend to notice nearly all the birds, as searching them out is common practice for the Byakugan.

Hence even the youngest Hyuuga know many if not all of the color-coded avian messages well before they become shinobi and need to learn them. Neji, then a nine-year old boy, knew them all. White, yellow, blue, red, black, even the rare green and purple and orange.

And when the time came, he learned each of their meanings, and their images remained in his mind. The only one that faded away was the brown bird. It was one of the few assigned no particular meaning – generic, all-purpose, brown birds merely waited to be given any message to deliver.

…

Danzou was pleased to see the boy not only found the lone rock in the northeastern forests of Konoha, but understood how to use its seal to access ROOT's underground quarters. Itachi could do so much with so little instruction – precisely the reason the old councilman was calling on him.

They met on the crossroads walkway, dimly lit in the night by the moon pouring in from the cut-off pipes high above, the lone remaining sign the facility was an abandoned sewer system.

When Itachi approached him, he didn't kneel or even bow. He simply stared into Danzou's good eye, which strained to hide the rage uncoiling behind.

"I'm glad," Danzou said, "I'm glad you're here. I was not convinced your loyalties lie with the village." Itachi refused to answer. "You did well with the instructions I gave you –"

"Tell me why you called me here."

Danzou lifted the cane positioned between his legs and tapped it down. "I am grateful, but I am nevertheless your superior, and –"

"I don't answer to you. The Hokage leads the village, so I follow the Hokage."

"Ah. Aha." Danzou passed his anger off with a calm nod. "You followed him here?"

For a victorious moment, he thought he had stunned the genius Uchiha into silence – then he hopped back on his bad leg, shocked, as Itachi's face split into an alien grin and released the loudest, strangest laugh Danzou had ever heard – or so it felt, as he had never heard Itachi's laugh.

When he settled down, Itachi looked at Danzou with a smile of something like camaraderie. "Please just tell me what you want." He returned to stony calm. "Tell me so I can leave."

Danzou hesitated before handing over the papers, Itachi no longer seeming a reliable option. "You will be pleased to hear that the council, including the Hokage, has come to a conclusion on how to deal with your clan. They are as unresponsive to conciliatory gestures as ever, and becoming increasingly volatile –"

He stood beside Itachi, reading the same he did. The top of the list was marked 'TOP PRIORITIES', followed by the five names of key suspects among Uchiha elders. Next was the section 'KNOWN TRAITORS', the seven Uchiha clansmen who had already acted against the safety of the village from within its constructs, such as the Konoha Military Police Force.

He looked up and saw Itachi's eyes lingered on the last section, titled 'NOTABLE THREATS'. Four Uchiha shinobi whose powers were well-known and would potentially be devastating if turned on the village.

"I see," Itachi said. "The Hokage ordered this."

There was Uchiha Fugaku, sergeant of the KMPF and an important leader among the Uchiha, and Uchiha Setsuna, no younger than Danzou but blessed with lasting strength.

"It is regrettable, yes, but necessary. It was decided that the Hokage himself should not deliver a mission of this kind."

Third was his old teammate Kagami's son, Danzou noted with a heavy sigh. And lastly was that other prodigy. In what was no doubt an attempt to liken him to the far more powerful Yondaime Hokage, they referred to him as the Flicker.

…

"Shisui." Itachi glanced to the sliding wall – the little shadow of his brother had passed by earlier, but was gone now – and then he repeated the name. "You think it's Shisui."

Fugaku nodded. "Several of my men on the Force have reported he's been asking about you. He was gone for half a day and missed his own sister's graduation from the Academy – the same morning you went on your first ANBU mission." Itachi stared at the floor impassively. Fugaku continued, "I asked him about it. He claimed he followed you out of concern, to make sure you were doing well… He thought you hadn't been the same lately."

"Shisui."

"I told him to continue keeping tabs on you so as not to alert him. Itachi…" Fugaku leaned forward, trying to meet his heir's eyes. "We know someone infiltrated the Shrine and tampered with the tablet. This was a mere three days after my brother showed Shisui our clan's history."

"… Ask someone else."

"You are the strongest Uchiha. No… I need you to be the strongest Uchiha. You are our hope. I trust no one else to do this."

"You could be wrong."

Fugaku took his hand, smiling bracingly. "Do you think I am?"

…

Naka River was dark at night, Itachi thought. He chuckled. That goes without saying.

"What is it?" Shisui asked. Itachi shook his head even though Shisui might not notice, deep in the shadow off the cliffs as they were. He didn't ask again, anyway.

"Did you go find the treasure yet?"

"Huh?" Shisui laughed. "That's what you wanted to ask? No, I stopped looking. It's probably a fairytale."

"Why would the clan hide the tablet if all it told was a fairytale?"

"I don't know." Shisui shrugged. "I haven't even seen the thing. I guess it was just a rumor."

Itachi sighed. "You didn't see it?"

"Nah." Pebbles knocked about: Shisui stepped closer. Maybe he couldn't hear over the gushing river. "Itachi, what's going on? Why did you bring me here?"

Itachi was about to answer when something cried out: a brown bird shot down between them and fluttered to his wrist. He took its note quickly and irritably, finishing it before the bird had flown away. "Nevermind. Let's go home."

"Another mission?"

"It can wait."

"No it can't. Itachi." Itachi was already walking away, headed up the cliffside path. "You know how important you are to the clan. You can't risk that acting like this."

"Risk what? Who's at risk?"

"The clan!"

"The clan, the clan, the clan. The clan can't sit in ANBU meetings and learn the Hokage's plans. The clan can't be caught with stolen records in his pocket. The clan can't be executed with a single slash to the neck. I am not _the clan_."

Shisui struggled not to let the outburst deter him. "But you are, Itachi. Both of us are. Our actions reflect the clan's, our successes raise it –" He approached his cousin's back and placed a hand on the symbol emblazoned there. "Each of us fans the fire."

To his surprise, Shisui felt a tremble under his hand. "The fire, huh," Itachi chuckled again. "And what of our deaths? What does the clan do with those?"

"The clan lives on, we live on. There are no deaths." The tremble stopped.

…

"Dad's always going on about you all the time…"

"Am I…unpleasant?" He spoke for its own sake. The words were disconnected from his thoughts, something to occupy his brother sitting next to him. "That's not so bad…"

He didn't wonder why Shisui had smiled as the fangs of water dragged him into the river. What seemed peculiar to Itachi was his own calm at the thought. Did he not care about his cousin? "Shinobi usually live as hated people because they're said to be a problem."

That wasn't it. The burning sensation in the back of his eyes told him otherwise. "To be top notch is really something to think about." It might simply not have been his fault. Why would he care if it wasn't his fault? "To have strength means you become isolated and arrogant." They asked him to do it. He did it. So, he didn't do it. "Although at first, you only sought what you had dreamt of."

That wasn't it. That certainly wasn't it. "Well… We're simply unique siblings. In order to overcome your barriers, you and I have to continue living together." He smiled: he had known the answer the whole time, but he hadn't listened to himself.

"Even if it means hating each other." Shisui died smiling – Itachi didn't feel guilty – Shisui died happily by his hand. "That's what being an older brother means."

…

"None of them?" Koharu repeated incredulously.

Kakashi, ANBU mask placed on the floor in a show of respect to the fully seated council and the Hokage, nodded. "None of them. I've received word from the other scouts: we didn't find any of the facilities described on the tablet." He corrected himself. "They don't exist."

"He lied to us," Sarutobi said, sighing gravely. "I was certain he wanted to cooperate with us. Very well... Bring everyone home."

"A member of that clan is not to be trusted," Danzou said, and only Sarutobi noticed Kakashi's slight double-take, "you shouldn't have brought him into our –"

The doors burst open – Kakashi spun around, wakizashi in hand, but it was another ANBU agent. "Hokage, sir! Emergency report!"

"What is it?"

"There's been a… a, an attack, on the Uchiha compound. On the Uchiha clan."

"An attack?" Koharu repeated incredulously.

"Settle down," Danzou said, shooting an annoyed glance at his fellow councilman, "and tell us the details." The agent looked to Sarutobi, who nodded calmly: seeing this, Danzou barked angrily, "have you identified the casualties? How many dead?"

The agent rubbed his forehead in confused exasperation, forgetting he was wearing a mask. "All of them."

…

He allowed every Uchiha who had awakened their Sharingan one last vision: his new eye descending on them, set aflame.

Two people he showed a different world. His parents, the truth: his meetings with the Hokage, the falsified tablet, Danzou's request, Shisui's "unknown" whereabouts and final mission.

However, he showed his mother one lie: the night his father brought him to the Shrine, as they had lived it. For his father he replayed the scene with the lie removed.

(Fugaku held his torch closer to the hidden tablet of the Naka Shrine. His son kneeled beside it. He was re-reading the first part.

'… _closest friend. This is the only way for an Uchiha-by-blood to gain their full birthright.'_

His son turned to him, teary-eyed but with a slight smile, a smile of understanding, a smile of gratitude for Fugaku's small honesty, and said, "Thank you for showing me this.")

…

The brown bird soared over the village walls, over the northeastern forest, and descended where Naka River becomes another, unnamed river, flowing through a different forest, quenching the thirsts of a different village.

It fluttered down and landed softly on Orochimaru's outstretched hands. He looked up just as Itachi stepped out of a clung of trees and under the moon, approaching the Sage on the open field by the fresh river.

"You finally came," Orochimaru said. He snapped the bird's neck.

"I didn't know you were with them."

Orochimaru grinned. "Oh, there are so many things those eyes have yet to see. Come."

Itachi followed him north along the river, where it thinned and entered the forest. They walked in silence for hours, neither saying nor thinking to move faster, knowing the other wouldn't do the same anyway. They passed a pack of wolves feeding on a deer together as the night sky warmed and walked through a sunlit clearing while an encampment of merchants and their shinobi escort looked on in horror.

Finally they reached a great river, perhaps the same they had met at, that flowed from distant mountains and down between two massive statues, becoming a grand waterfall that filled a valley. There, they met a blonde man sitting atop the head of Senju Hashirama's likeness.

"I hope you brought a decision," the man said.

"And if I haven't?" Itachi answered.

"We want you to join us, but we don't need you to. We'll go on either way." As if to prove his point, the man, Yahiko - Deva Path - stood and walked away.

Itachi didn't follow him. Instead, he ascended the head of Senju and took the black-and-red cloak left behind for him.

…


End file.
